


like a prayer in the dark (i thought i saw you)

by kay_emm_gee



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Assassins & Hitmen, Based on, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gods, Grave Mercy - Freeform, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-05-04 15:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 63,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5339921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since her mother’s death four years ago, Clarke has belonged to the convent of St. Mortain, the god of death, one of the Old Nine gods of medieval Brittany. She has trained to become an assassin, a handmaiden of Mortain, carrying out His will and His justice, and has become one of the best. When she finally gets sent out into the field, on a long-term cover mission at the Duchess’s court, however, everything she thinks she knows about the convent, about Mortain, about justice and mercy, and most of all about herself and her own heart, comes into question. As she teams up with Bellamy Blake–a close confidant of the Duchess and a frustrating, intriguing puzzle of a man–Clarke slowly learns who she is and who she needs to be to survive are two very different things. </p><p>{Based on Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers}</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic may touch on some sensitive topics (murder, suicidal thoughts, I think is the extent) so this is a heads up. On the same note, if anyone decides to read the book/series, be warned: it is excellent but contains very triggering topics (murder, suicide, rape, assault, incest, abuse). Just wanted to put it out there so people weren't surprised - the last four are definitely not in this fic, though, to clarify.

Maybe if the baron’s son had lived, the soldiers wouldn’t have come in the dead of night, with their swords and distrustful glares, seeking to burn her mother for witchcraft.

The boy had been deep in the throws of the plague by the time Clarke and Abby had been summoned. There was nothing to be done, not at that late stage of the disease’s progression. From the second they stepped into the smoky, stuffy room— _damn ‘physicians’ don’t know a thing_ , her mother had muttered under her breath as she let breathable, fresh air in through the window—they knew he was a lost cause. Even so, Abby had stayed, and so had Clarke. They brewed tisanes to ease the boy’s pain and lathered him in balms to bring down his fever. Abby held his hand and Clarke sang as he slipped into Death’s warm embrace, as his parents were nowhere to be found.

They were around afterwards, however, to scream and rage that Abby hadn’t done enough, that she had let their son die out of spite because they had called the physician first. It wasn’t a secret that Abby Griffin hated the newest lackey sent by the church to ‘civilize’ their village, especially when those fearful of the church’s wrath turned to his new but ineffective treatments instead of hers, which had served them well for decades, centuries even. Clarke’s mother didn’t suffer fools, especially those that bowed to fear.  _The only ones we should fear are gods_ , she always said. That was another thing the entire village knew about Abby and her daughter: they still worshipped the Old Nine of Brittany. The Saints, as they were now called, to fit with the church’s doctrine. Still, it had never proved a problem other than the occasional threat or suspicious glare.

So maybe if the baron’s son had lived, nothing would have changed. But Death came to their village, taking the little boy with Him and leaving grieving, angry, vengeful parents in His wake.

* * *

It started with a panicked knock at their door in the dead of night, and Tor Lemkin bursting into their cottage.

“They’re coming for you,” he wheezed. “Abby, they’re coming.”

Clarke watched with wide eyes as her mother glanced at her mournfully before pulling Tor to the other side of the room, whispering with him in rushed, hushed tones. Pulling the rough, wool blanket to her chest tightly, Clarke strained to hear but could only catch incoherent fragments of conversation. Panic rose in her chest as she watched her mother’s expression twist from fearful to determined and finally to resigned. Falling silent, Abby went to her workbench, pausing there for a minute before walking over to Clarke, tears in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, voice thick as she crouched beside the bed. “I had hoped this day would never come, but we have no choice now. We have to leave. Tor has arranged for friends to hide me, and to take you to someplace safe as well.”

“I want to stay with you!” Clarke cried out, clutching at her mother’s wrists.

“I know, baby,” Abby choked out. “I don’t want to leave you. But it’s the only way to keep you safe. You’re going—“ she paused, her eyes flicking to Tor cautiously—“you’re going north.”

“No,” Clarke argued stubbornly, scrambling to cling to her mother as she fought back tears. “I’m not leaving you. We can fight them, together.”

“My brave girl,” her mother whispered into her hair, pressing kisses to her temple. “Hold onto that courage, and to your compassion. I love you so much.”

Then something sharp pricked the back of Clarke’s neck. Her vision darkened, her skin warmed, her mouth dried up.

“Mother,” she rasped, identifying the symptoms of her mother’s own special brand of anesthetic even as she slipped into oblivion.

_May the Nine bless you, and may we meet again._

Her mother’s heartbroken farewell was the last thing Clarke heard before her world went black.

* * *

When she woke, her bones rattled violently underneath her skin, and her head pounded painfully. With a muffled groan, she sat up, her hands scratching against the rough, vibrating wood underneath her palms. Looking around in the pitch-black night, she realized she was in the back of a moving cart, nestled in between boxes of turnips and cabbage. The soft plodding of hoof beats and the quiet rustling of leaves were the only sounds she could hear.

“You’re awake,” a firm voice echoed above her. “Good.”

Jerking her gaze up, Clarke fixed her sights on the slight, shadowed figure with silvery hair perched on the cart seat at the front. “Who are you?” She demanded, but quietly.

“A friend of the Nine,” was his only response. “Now stay down, and be quiet.”

Clarke frowned defiantly. She wanted to know more, deserved to know more, but questions stuck in her parched throat, and the sharp memory of her mother’s last words ate at her resolve. So, she slumped back against the side of the cart, blinking back tears as the cart rumbled through the night, feeling numb to the sudden way she had been ripped from everything she had known in her short fourteen years of life.

And she stayed numb. She stayed numb through the next night when she was transferred to another cart, and two days later when she was hustled into a covered caravan, and finally moved into a third cart which, three nights later, deposited her in front of an old shack teetering on the rocky edge of the sea. As waves crashed loudly against the cliffs, sending salt spray to coat her already chapped lips, Clarke stumbled forward to knock on the door decorated with shells and driftwood. The sight almost had her smiling, because knowing she was in the hands of those who paid worship to Saint Mer was a comforting thought.

The wizened old man who responded to her knock was not as welcoming as she had expected, however. He merely grunted at her, gesturing with a gnarled finger to the steep path leading to the water’s edge below. With slow steps, because her feet ached something fierce, she staggered down, the man clattering and grumbling along behind her. He practically pushed her into the boat tethered there before jumping in himself and pushing them out into the sea with strong, confident paddle strokes.

The fog prevented Clarke from seeing their destination until it was already upon them: a craggy island, upon which sat a stone building, austere and imposing, with yellow candlelight flickering in several of its windows. A whining breeze picked up as they docked, sending Clarke’s matted hair whipping around her face. Her teeth chattered as she sloshed through the frigid shallow waters to stumble onto the beach.

“Where are we?” She finally dared ask, shivering and turning to look back at her escort who was already shoving back out to see.

Pausing briefly, the man raised his eyebrows, assessing her carefully, dubiously. “You’re at the convent of Saint Mortain, girl.”

Clarke froze, fear clawing at her insides as she turned slowly to look up again at the formidable building rising into the murky midnight sky, the rocky path leading up to it bordered by tall, jagged stones rising from the barren soil like the teeth of a beast just waiting to swallow her whole.

_Saint Mortain._

_The God of Death_.

Her limbs shook, from exhaustion or terror, she didn’t know. She had heard whispers of this place, the mysterious home of those who served the most ancient of the gods. It was spoken of in cautious whispers and uncertain terms, because its secrets were some of the best guarded of the realm.

Never had Clarke dreamed of seeing it herself.

As she stood there, staring, she heard the lapping of the waves against the side of the boat fade, and spinning around, she saw the man and her only way back to the only life she knew disappearing into the misty fog. Swallowing thickly, she closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and remembered her mother’s parting words:  _my brave girl._

The first step forward was the hardest, but hunger and exhaustion and knowing she lacked other options made the next ones easier. By the time she banged on the modest wooden door set deep into the front of the building, Clarke had control of her terror, steeling her expression and her spine as she waited for whatever was on the other side of the door.

A girl, it turned out to be—her age, with a pretty, kind face framed by short, wild, dark hair and who was dressed in a simple black skirt and bodice.

“You must be Clarke,” she said with a soft smile. “We’ve been expecting you. I’m Maya, a novitiate. I’m to take you to the abbess.”

With purpose, she began walking down the hall, clearly expecting her guest to follow. Hesitating, Clarke lingered in the doorway. Only when the wind began howling behind her again, sounding eerily like hounds out on the hunt, did she startle forward, running to catch up with her escort. As they briskly moved through the deserted halls, she assessed her surroundings, which were dark, stark, and cold. There was a sense of strength and protection there as well, though; something about the sturdiness, the sheer force radiating from the stone walls gave Clarke comfort.

No torch-bearing soldiers or close-minded men could get to her here.

With a pang of worry and longing, she thought of her mother and hoped she was somewhere as seemingly safe as well.

Suddenly, Clarke bumped into Maya, who had stopped moving. They had arrived at the end of the hall.

“The abbess is inside, waiting for you,” Maya murmured, gently pushing her towards the slightly cracked door in front of them.

Lifting her chin, Clarke determinedly pushed the door open. She walked into the glowing room to be greeted by a stern-looking woman staring at her over steepled fingers.

“Clarke Griffin, finally you have joined us,” the woman said in a rich voice, rising with grace and fortitude. “I am Indra. Sit.”

Again, Clarke hesitated, because the imperious tone of the abbess’s voice prickled uncomfortably in her ears.

“Why am I here?” She demanded, meeting Indra’s stare with just as much steel and command.

“Sit,” Indra enunciated slowly. “And I will tell you about your mother.”

Grinding her teeth, because already the woman knew her weak spot, Clarke sunk into the plain wooden chair in front of the desk. The hard surface was not kind against her travel-weary joints, but she ignored the aches, instead focusing on Indra’s narrowed gaze.

“I am sorry, Clarke,” the abbess continued. “But your mother was not in as good hands as you were. She was discovered, and she was killed.”

Numbness flooded her again as a roaring sound filled her ears, and for what felt like hours Clarke sat still as the stones surrounding the convent outside. It was only when wet drops fell onto the hands limp in her lap that she realized she was crying.

“Drink,” Indra insisted, and Clarke startled at her sudden, unnoticed proximity. The woman jammed a cup full of crimson liquid—wine, from the sour smell of it—underneath Clarke’s lips. Shakily, she reached up to grip the cup, taking a small sip that turned into three large ones. The wine slid warmly down her throat, its tingling heat spreading through her abdomen and down her limbs, washing away the numbness of her grief.

“Better,” Indra muttered as she took a seat behind her desk again.

“How?” Clarke breathed, setting the mostly empty goblet at her feet. “Why?”

“Because there are those who fear the power of the old gods, and they seek to eliminate those who still believe in that power.”

_People like me_ , Clarke realized dully.  _People like my mother_. Rage welled up in her chest, as if to keep her devastation company. “Who killed her?” She spat out, her hands clutching at her knees.

“Someone who will meet with Death’s justice, and soon,” Indra growled, seemingly just as infuriated. “We do not take it lightly when someone comes after one of our own. Blood must have blood.”

“Your own? My mother belonged to Saint Brigantia,” Clarke stated, watching the abbess carefully.

“That she was—a devoted worshipper and a talented healer. But I was not talking about her.”

The way Indra’s steady gaze fell on her made Clarke’s skin crawl. “Not me,” she whispered. “I was sworn to Saint Brigantia at birth, like my mother. I belong to her.”

“No,” the abbess countered. “No, my child. A daughter of Death can belong to no one but Saint Mortain himself.”

“My father was—”

“A placeholder, a father in name only. You are a daughter of Death, there is no doubt.”

“No!” Clarke yelled, knocking over the chair as she stood, overwhelming emotions swirling chaotically inside her as she remembered her father’s kind face and warm laugh, the safety she felt in his arms, the devastating sorrow that came when he was killed in one of the many wars ravaging their country of Brittany. “I am the daughter of Jake Griffin—”

“Quiet!” Indra thundered, smacking her hand down on the desk in front of her. “You are a daughter of Saint Mortain, Clarke, otherwise the poison in the wine would have killed you by now.”

“What?” Clarke breathed, frantically looking down at the cup. It had tipped over, and the remaining wine had splashed on the stone floor, a puddle of deep red that had Clarke’s stomach rolling as she imagined a similarly colored pool pouring from her mother’s lifeless body.

“You are immune to poisons. A powerful gift from Him, indeed.”

“I don’t want it,” Clarke ground out. “I don’t want any of this.”

“You were sent to us to train, to learn His arts, to protect those like your mother, like yourself, who are at the mercy of those who abuse their power. To strike them down where they stand, and to strike fear in the hearts of those who think to follow in their footsteps. We will not let their attempts at terror stand, and we are the only ones who have Saint Mortain’s blessing to carry out His sentence when He cannot.”

Indra’s fervent words and Clarke’s own distant memories of murmured tales about the convent clashed in her mind, and suddenly it dawned on her. “Assassins,” she breathed. “You are assassins.”

“And so you will be too. It is your birthright, as a daughter of Death, to become His handmaiden and carry out His will. It is your  _birthright_ , and you cannot refuse.”

“But I do!” She shouted, advancing on the abbess, rage and panic and uncertainty warring in her.

Indra didn’t flinch, just shifted forward in her seat, eyes darkening in disapproval. “Do you not want to exact Saint Mortain’s justice?”

“I am a healer. I save lives, not take them,” Clarke spat, bracing herself on the edge of the desk to face the abbess head-on.

“But you face Death all the same,” Indra hissed. “Become the judge, not the bargainer. Be the one carrying out His will, and you will find peace for your grieving heart.”

Fury bubbled up in Clarke again. Indra was using her mother’s death to push her into this choice, and not only that, but it was working. Her blood sung for vengeance, to wage war on the men who took her mother from her, the men who want to squash the power of the gods and take it for themselves.

As Clarke remained motionless, at war with herself, she saw a smile flicker on Indra’s face, no doubt sensing that her argument was winning.

“We can teach you how to slit someone’s throat so cleanly you won’t even need to wipe up afterwards,” Indra hissed, rising slowly from her seat, fierce and terrifying in her quiet fury. “We can teach you how to incapacitate someone with just a few touches, how to strangle someone so quietly that even people in the next room couldn’t notice. And with your particular gift, we can teach you how to brew a potion so deadly even a whiff of it would kill everyone in the room.” Indra paused, her eyes boring deep into Clarke’s, as if in warning and in promise at the same time. “This is your birthright, Clarke—accept it, and join your sisters in serving your god.”

“Sisters?” Clarke whispered reflexively, a soft hope rising in her. She clung to that feeling, instead of the dark, sucking void low in her abdomen that rejoiced at the violence Indra had just described.

“You did not think you were alone in this, did you?” The abbess asked wryly.

As if on cue, the door behind them creaked open, revealing Maya who was smiling shyly.

“Take Clarke to the infirmary for the night,” Indra ordered as she sank back down into her chair. “She can join you and the rest of the girls in the dormitory tomorrow.”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” Clarke interjected, whipping back around her adversary.

Indra raised her eyebrows, a knowing expression on her face. “Haven’t you?”

Clarke swallowed, glancing at Maya who was just waiting patiently, understanding in her gaze. It pained her to give in, because she didn’t trust Indra, but there was something inside her, pulling at her to relent. Whether it was the promise of justice, or the promise of family when she would otherwise have no one, she felt torn between resisting surrender and embracing what could be a purposeful future.  

“I have not,” she lied, glaring at Indra once more before following Maya out the door.

The girl didn’t say a word as she led Clarke through more winding hallways. When she dropped her off at the infirmary entrance, however, just before another sister—an older one this time—whisked her away, Maya leaned in, a soft smile on her face as she said, “There are good people here, Clarke. I promise you that. Give us a chance.”

Clarke closed her eyes against the tears forming, feeling oddly adrift as Maya walked away. The sister ushering her inside either didn’t notice her distress, or ignored it, instead firmly but kindly instructing her to strip out of her muddied, worn clothes and into a clean chemise. Obeying without protest, because her exhaustion was finally catching up to her, Clarke wordlessly undressed, drank the tisane presented to her, and crawled into bed.

Mind undecided but also too exhausted to make a choice tonight, she allowed the numbness of grief and anger to wash over her again, her eyelids drifting closed, thinking of the uncertain future that could await her among the handmaidens of Mortain.

* * *

_Her mother’s soft fingers stroked her forehead, brushing away stray strands of hair._

My brave girl _, she murmured._ I’m so sorry I never told you.

About Him?  _Clarke mumbled back, eyes too heavy to open._

About everything,  _she whispered._

_Clarke whimpered, desperate to know more, aching for her mother’s embrace, but she couldn’t move, could only lie there, feeling the fingers brush against her skin over and over again._

Poor little bird,  _her mother crooned._

_An itching sensation tickled the back of Clarke’s thoughts, but the voice interrupted._

Little bird tried to fly away,  _it spoke again._  But little bird didn’t know how. Little bird wasn’t fast enough, smart enough—and she fell.

_A soft, eerie laugh sounded next to Clarke’s ear._

Now little bird has broken wings.

_This wasn’t her mother._

Clarke jerked away, startling the girl who was bent over her, the girl with dark, haunted eyes, even darker hair, and a gaunt, haggard face.

“Little bird,” she breathed, reaching out for Clarke, a curious shadow in her gaze. “Little bird just wants to fly again.”

The yearning in her voice caused Clarke’s own chest to swell with want—for what, she didn’t know. Taking in the girl in front of her, she noticed various bruises on her bare arms, and a brace around her knee. The most disturbing feature about her, though, was the air of brokenness that surrounded her, though Clarke could still make out a hint of fire in her voice.

“Can you teach me?” She whispered, inching closer, and Clarke felt the strange urge to reach out and grasp her hand and never let go. “Can you?”

The soft click of the door latch lifting open broke the moment though, and the girl startled away, fury now etched across her features as she hissed at the intruding sister.

“Raven,” the woman said softly, hands raised in caution. “Please go back to bed.”

“So you can tie me down again?”

“You were hurting yourself.”

“I will not be caged,” she bellowed, the sudden ferocity of her voice causing Clarke to flinch away.

Raven didn’t miss the motion, a wave of sadness crossing her features before the anger reappeared. Then she whipped around, racing for the end of the long infirmary room, surprisingly quick for someone with an injury like hers. Clarke thought the decision odd, because there was nowhere to go, but then she watched in horror as Raven hauled herself up onto the large ledge of the open window.

The sister gasped, lurching forward to stop her, but then froze when Raven cackled and inched closer to the inky night outside.

“Little bird was meant to fly,” she declared with a ferocious smile but panicked eyes. “So little bird will.”

“Come back inside, Raven,” the nun pleaded. “You belong with your sisters.”

“No!” She screamed back. “I will not! I will be free!”

Fear and understanding raced through Clarke’s veins, because underneath the veiled phrases and wildness, she could sense the girl’s grief, the need to escape anything that held her down. It was all too familiar, and Clarke knew that if it weren’t for the offer Indra had presented her, she might be willing to risk injury, and even death, just to feel free of the weight tugging on her heart.

“Raven,” she called out suddenly as she pushed off the bed, desperate to stop the girl from jumping. “Don’t leave. Please, don’t.”

Raven’s eyes snapped to Clarke, and she held her gaze with a fierce intensity. Cautiously, not wanting to break the tense stalemate, Clarke stepped forward, letting all of her own grief infuse her expression, so that Raven might understand: she wasn’t alone.

“They, the sisters—did they tell you how they can help?”

Raven hissed, eyes slitting, but Clarke pushed forward, knowing it was worth the risk. “You can have justice for those who have hurt you, and who have hurt those you care about. I lost someone I loved too, and they have promised me that Mortain’s judgment will be served. I’m sure they will promise you that too.”

After a long, worrying pause, where Raven shifted unevenly on her nimble feet, she finally whispered, “And you believe them?”

The rawness of her tone, the sheer overwhelming doubt tinged with just the slightest bit of hope ate at Clarke, and without hesitating, she nodded quickly. “I do.”

Raven nodded back, tears suddenly making her eyes glitter. “Okay.”

Then every line in her body seemed to slack, and she slumped forward, swaying on her feet. Clarke raced forward to catch her as she tumbled from the ledge, grasping her waist tightly as they made their way back to the beds. The sister started towards them to help, but Clarke shot her a cautious glance, warning her off. She had this, had her.

As she tucked Raven in, the girl’s hand clutched at Clarke’s arm, a tight, needy grip that articulated the vulnerability she couldn’t bring herself to express using words. Without hesitation, Clarke crawled into bed beside her, clasping their hands together. When the door clicked shut again, she felt Raven’s sigh of relief, and even let out one of her own.

Despite feeling exhausted to the bone, Clarke didn’t let her eyes slip closed until Raven’s had, the sight calming her more than expected. And in that moment, a fleeting moment of finally no longer feeling alone in a world that had tried so very hard to tear her apart, Clarke made her decision. The convent of Saint Mortain was to be her home, and these women, these girls, to be her sisters, her new family.

A small sliver of peace settled into her heart, and she drifted off to sleep, still grieving but also content knowing that Mortain’s justice would be served, and it would be by her very own hand.

_For He is merciful but also just, and blood must have blood._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After four years of training, Clarke thrilled to be sent out into the field on her first round of missions, but she doesn’t expect trouble in the shape of a sharp witted, stubborn, freckle-faced interloper to thwart her.

_Four years later…_

Clarke gasped as needle-like pain shot up the arm twisted behind her back in Maya’s strong grip. Her friend laughed lightly as she struggled to break free, but to no avail. She was good and stuck, with no other option than to admit defeat.

There was a reason none of the other novitiates wanted to partner with Maya during their combat training sessions. Her hand-to-hand skills were unparalleled, and not only because she had been studying at the convent since before she could walk. Her natural talent for quick movements and even quicker thinking both awed and intimidated her fellow sisters, but Clarke didn’t mind sparring with her. Of course, that meant she lost more often than not and ended up with more bruises and sprains than the other girls, but she also learned more. In the past four years of studying weapons and poisons, fighting and spying, politics and seduction, Clarke had grasped at any chance to better herself, to gain the upper hand, because there was nothing on earth she wanted more than to be the best prepared to carry out her duty as a handmaiden of Mortain.

“You’re getting better,” Maya encouraged as she let go at Clarke’s signal of surrender. “You almost had me there on the ground.”

“And you need to teach me how you broke out of that pin,” Clarke shot back with a grin, stretching out her sore muscles.

“Clarke!” The girls turned around to see Sister Calliope calling from the courtyard entrance. “The abbess requests your presence.”

Excitement burst through her.  _Another mission._

“Congratulations,” Maya murmured, and all of Clarke’s joy drained away.

“Your turn  _is_  coming,” Clarke reassured her, firmly, decisively, even fiercely. “I know it.”

Maya shrugged, casting her gaze downward in disappointment, and frustration with the abbess left a sour taste in Clarke’s mouth. If she was being honest, Maya was leagues ahead of her in all the training, except possibly poisons, and that was only because of Clarke’s unique gift of immunity that allowed her more practice with them. It was a mystery why Maya was being held back from field missions, kept within the safe but slightly suffocating stone walls of the convent.

Reluctant to leave her friend but also not wanting to disobey orders, Clarke gave Maya’s arm a quick squeeze, which finally got the girl to smile briefly, before walking away to answer the abbess’s summons.

With each hurried step, Clarke slowly felt her excitement build again, recalling the rush of power she had felt after her very first solo mission a few weeks ago. It had gone better than she had hoped, practically seamless. She had slipped in among the tavern’s patrons without notice, then smoothly tricked the serving maid into letting her take the tray up to her target’s room, posing as his lover. And the poisoning of that traitor of her country and her duchess had been flawless, without a single misstep. Even Mortain’s marque had been clear as day on the target’s lips, even without her having received His Tears to see it, and she thanked Him for bestowing that gift upon her as well. In fact, Clarke would’ve considered the entire job perfect, except for one small hitch.

The farmer. With his hunched posture, potbelly, and slurred speech, he had seemed of no consequence, just another villager looking to get drunk on watered-down ale and have a tumble in the hay with whoever was willing. Still, the fact that he had waylaid her both upon entrance and exit of the pub bothered her, an annoying hiccup in an otherwise faultless job.

Determination seared through her as she practically ran through the halls of the convent, her plain woolen skirt swishing wildly around her ankles, and Clarke vowed that her second mission would not have such a drawback. Also, getting to go out into the field again would give her more chances to keep an eye and ear out for Raven, who had been sent out on a long-term mission months ago. She hadn’t written a word to them since, though she had been in contact with the convent. The lack of any personal exchange worried both her and Maya. They missed their friend sorely, and the pit in Clarke’s stomach grew whenever she considered what her sister might be going through out there. Raven had healed herself several times over in the last four years, becoming one of the strongest of them all, confident and daring and brave, but still, Clarke couldn’t push away her concern for her best friend.

So lost in her mix of worry and enthusiasm, she forgot to knock before entering the abbess’s office, instead bursting in without a second thought.

All of her eagerness drained away, however, as Indra sent her a thunderous glare from her seat behind her desk.

“I apologize for my novitiate’s rudeness, Chancellor Wallace,” she said through gritted teeth. “I assure you, she is much more circumspect out in the field.”

“Her enthusiasm speaks well of her dedication to our cause,” the white-haired, wrinkled but also stately man seated in the chair in front of Indra’s desk remarked, amusement in his gravely voice. “I am sure she is more than capable.”

The dubious expression on Indra’s face signaled that she didn’t quite agree with that opinion at this particular moment, so Clarke tried her best to appear contrite, not wanting to miss out on whatever was planned.

“I apologize, abbess, and to you too, milord,” she said demurely, dropping into the slightest of curtsies, barely low enough to be appropriate for their guest’s station, not willing to give more than an inch until she knew what he was about. “I am—anxious to serve my god in any way I can.”

Chancellor Wallace chuckled again, his sharp eyes flicking up and down Clarke’s figure appraisingly, calculatingly, letting her know he had not missed her little game. She stared right back in return, wanting him to know she was acutely aware of his assessment. “She will do just fine,” he finally said, a smile that bordered on sly hovering at the corners of his thin mouth.

With a labored sigh, Indra gestured for Clarke to sit, which she did, just barely, perching on the edge of her seat, eager to hear what the convent, and Mortain, had in store for her.

* * *

As Clarke clutched the Chancellor’s arm, she resisted removing a hand to adjust her bodice, which was too tight and much, much too low. Silently cursing the nuns’ choice of wardrobe for the night—she always hated playing the mistress—she tried to instead focus on the guests around her, hiding her uncomfortability with a lazy gaze and coy smile.

“You are welcome to move about on your own,” Wallace whispered as he leaned in. “It will be easier to finish your task, I presume.”

Clarke giggled, as if he were amusing her, giving a nod so he knew that she understood. Then, playfully, she disengaged her arm from his and flounced off, pretending to be just another pretty thing dazzled by the grandeur around her.

Already she knew her target—Shumway, his name was—would not be in the receiving room. Slipping away from the crowd was simple; she had always excelled at blending in. As she crept up the shadowed staircase to the upstairs rooms, where Shumway was waiting to meet his contact, she fingered the bracelet at her wrist. It was a simple piece, nothing that would draw compliments. The thought made her grin, because its beauty lay not in its aesthetic beauty but in its hidden purpose: pull on the end, and a thin but unbreakable wire would unravel from inside, the perfect garrote. The pins in her hair were just as deceptive, the outer parts decorated with sparkling jewels, the other ends coated in poison that only needed to penetrate the slightest layer of skin to fell a man twice her size. As a last resort, she had thin-as-paper knives strapped to the insides of her wrists and ankles for easy access, a bit messier but just as effective means to achieving her ends.

The first three doors revealed nothing but dark, empty rooms, but Clarke paused before the fourth, the warm spark of human life calling to her from inside. Swallowing and breathing deeply to collect herself, she let her true thrill of the awaiting task morph into feigned silliness, falling into the room with a giggle and a whispered question of a name, as if she was meeting someone.

The stout man silhouetted by the far window looked up sharply at her entrance. “Who goes there?”

“You are not who I am looking for,” Clarke said with a pout, folding her arms across her chest in dissatisfaction.

“I am not. And you should not be here.”

She stepped closer, even as his expression grew more displeased, and she smiled flirtatiously in an effort to distract him. “He is not here, I see that. But maybe you will do.”

Despite putting her best effort forward, her target did not seem to want to give into her offered distraction. As she spotted the marque on his throat, however—the small, ashy smudge that made her smile in a genuine fashion, for His marque was never wrong—she stumbled forward, determined to carry out her mission.

“Yes,” she purred, darting behind Shumway as she trailed her fingers along his tense shoulders. “You will do  _just_ fine.”

For a split second, she felt his muscles relax, and it was then that she knew she had him. Running her hands down his chest from behind, she slid them together at his sternum and reached for her bracelet.

Then, with a sudden jerk, she pulled the wire out and wrapped it around his neck, yanking as tightly as she could so that his gasps were soundless.

_Another minute, another minute_ , she chanted to herself as his scrabbling movements grew weaker, praying to Mortain to make his death quick, if only to keep her from being discovered. She had no sympathy for those who betrayed country and duchess. The saint must have heard her, for her target sagged with finality against her the very next moment.

As he choked out his last breath, she stretched up and whispered viciously in his ear, “And so His justice is served. Traitors are not deserving of His mercy, and blood must have blood.”

With one last shudder, he fell still. The body’s weight falling against her was startling, but then something even more surprising happened: soft brushes, like feathers, grazed her cheeks, and searing warmth filled her. She almost cried out in shock as images flashed before her:  _a ship, a crest, a letter, a ring, her own face._

Then it was over, leaving her bewildered as to what had just occurred. She had already been on her way to the convent when her last target had succumbed to her poison, slow acting as it was, so this was the first kill she was present for. As her thoughts pieced themselves back together, two words fill her mind, a low whisper of a voice she could swear was as familiar as her own:  _his soul._

That was certainly something the convent had never warned her of, and displeasure sat heavy in her chest. She didn’t like surprises in the field; they were a dangerous, even deadly, distraction. When she returned, she would have to ask Maya if she knew anything about such an experience.

The burden of her target’s body suddenly became more acute, so she heaved him towards the window, pushing him over. She smiled in relief when the thud of his body hitting wood echoed up to her, and the following soft click of hooves and rattling of cart wheels told her that the arranged disposal was going as planned. She snapped the garrote back into place at her wrist and headed for the exit, pleased with her success.

As she opened the door and stepped out, however, she collided with a warm, solid presence, one that smelled of steel, forest, and the slightest hint of incense. Close as she was to the intruder, her eyes focused on the sword-shaped pin holding the edges of a black cloak together—the sigil of Saint Camulos, the god of war. Before she could decide what part to play to fool whomever she had run into, large hands gripped her shoulders and propelled her back into the room.

“And what is a young thing like you doing up here instead of downstairs, enjoying the party?”

His voice was low, as firm as his grip, but the lack of conviction in his seemingly flirtatious words sent worrying shivers down Clarke’s spine. Finally addressing this bothersome intrusion of a man, she flicked a glance up at him through her eyelashes, taking in his broad face, dark and freckled, with intelligent eyes almost hidden by a mass of brown curls tumbling over his forehead.    

“Waiting for someone like you,” she breathed, angling her revealing chest upwards in a sloppy attempt at distraction.

He looked down, as she expected he would, but the absence of heat in his eyes when he met her gaze again had her stomach twisting in uncertain knots.

“Well, how fortunate for me,” he murmured, his eyes running over every part of her, cold and assessing and much too cautious for her liking. “But I don’t even know your name—who are you?”

She had been trained for this situation, a thousand times over, and a dozen names crawled their way up her throat, waiting to be uttered, but the way he was holding her, staring at her, right  _through_  her unsettled her to the point where her lips parted but nothing came from them.

Even that slight of a hesitation put a knowing, hard gleam in his eye, the one hounds took on when they finally picked up the blood scent.

“Who are you?” He repeated, no longer trying to be playful as he shook her hard. “What are you doing here, in this room?”

“Who are  _you_?” She spat out, shame flooding her as she scrambled to regain control of her faculties.

“Bellamy Blake, loyal servant of Her Grace the Duchess, something I do not think you are, if your presence and Shumway’s lack of is any clue.”

Her stomach dropped at his words, realizing something larger than the abbess had anticipated was going on here tonight. Panicking, because he could be lying—or, even more frightening, telling the truth—Clarke used one of Maya’s tricks to release herself from his grasp, no longer caring to keep up her pretense of innocence. Somehow, whoever he was and wherever his loyalties lay, he knew she was not just a woman, a flirt, a nobody—he saw that she was  _somebody_ , a somebody responsible for Shumway’s disappearance. It was the worst possible situation, and all she wanted to do was run, far away from him and his knowing gaze.

He reached out for her, but she darted away, racing for the door. Dislodging one of the few innocuous pins from her net of curls, she jammed it into the latch before swinging the door shut behind her, locking her pursuant in to give her and the Chancellor time to escape. The man’s angry shouts followed her down the hall, shaking her to her very core as she hurried down the stairs back to the rest of the guests.

She had barely collected herself by the time she swept into the loud, overheated room, eyes searching wildly for Wallace. With a heaving sigh of relief, she found him within a few seconds. Shrewd as he was, he read her alarm immediately, neatly excusing himself from his conversation to collect her.

“Did you complete your task?” He asked quietly as they headed for the exit.

“Yes, but not without difficulty.”

He raised his eyebrows at that admission, not displeased, simply concerned.

“I will explain later,” Clarke replied shortly, annoyed at herself for letting things go so awry. “But yes, it is done.”

“Then that is all that matters.”

His words did nothing to comfort her as they alighted their carriage, and her stomach rolled as she pictured the condemning expression on Indra’s face when she reported on her disastrous mission.

* * *

The abbess was indeed dissatisfied with her mishap, but her reprimand was quick, as apparently Blake’s presence in that room last night was of greater concern at the moment. Clarke breathed a silent word of thanks to Mortain that she was allowed to stay while Indra and Chancellor Wallace discussed possible reasons for one of the Duchess’s most trusted advisors meeting with Shumway. From her position against the back wall, she quietly listened to their speculations and theories about Blake’s actions, which ranged from mildly suspicious to outright accusatory.

“With the way things are at court, and the Duchess’s many suitors pressing her at every turn to announce her betrothal decision, and the presence of the French as well, I cannot even begin to say who is aligned with whom. The fact that Blake appeared to be meeting with Shumway, however—that does not bode well for him, or our Duchess,” Wallace commented, pursed lips pressing into his steepled fingertips when he finished speaking.

“We do not have the full story, yet,” the abbess mused, though she also frowned doubtfully. Her eyes glazed over, as they did whenever she was deep in thought, plotting her next move. After a few long minutes, where Wallace shifted restlessly, his grand robes ruffling in the otherwise silent room, Indra finally flicked a glance at Clarke, and then at Wallace.

“You said Blake was staying at that residence for another week or so, no?”

The Chancellor nodded, and Clarke’s stomach clenched nervously, already knowing what the abbess had in mind for her.

“Then let’s give my novitiate a chance to redeem herself. Clarke, you shall engage Blake—play the besotted fool, lure him in. See if you can suss out what his motives are. It is absolutely crucial that we know where the loyalties of someone so important to the Duchess lie.”

Dread seized Clarke’s limbs. She did not want to fail again, not at this. “Holy Mother, I do not think I am the right—”

Indra sniffed at her defiance, turning back to Wallace. “You also said he was watching her most intently as you two were leaving?”

“He had the look of a man captivated.”

Clarke barely choked back a snort, because the only thing Blake might have been captivated by was finding out how she had dispatched of Shumway.

“It will still not be easy,” Indra warned. “Blake is known as a most suspicious man.”

“I gathered that,” Clarke replied dryly, squirming in dissatisfaction as she recalled how thoroughly and quickly Blake had unraveled her façade last night. Truthfully, she had folded like a complete novice, which had made his job that much easier, and that fact pricked her pride. So, perhaps the opportunity to absolve herself in regards to Blake wasn’t such a poor idea after all.

Commotion sounded from outside in the hall before she could commit to anything, however, and then the abbess’s door crashed open, revealing none other than the man in question himself. Cheeks red from exertion and eyes narrowed in fury, Blake straightened his disheveled cloak as he swept into the room, heading straight for the abbess and the Chancellor.

“Bellamy Blake,” Indra greeted him tonelessly, standing as he continued to scowl at her. “What brings you to the convent of Saint Mortain?”

“Your inept agents,” he practically exploded, hands slamming down on the edge of the desk. A few scraps of parchment fluttered at the motion, but Indra stood firm, her expression hardening.

“Have some respect,” Wallace muttered, though he seems more intrigued by the confrontation than disapproving.

Blake scoffed. “I respect those who do not constantly interfere with my efforts to keep the Duchess safe from her enemies, both abroad and within our own borders.”

“We carry out Mortain’s will, a mission which has been ours alone for centuries,” Indra bit out. “Are you suggesting that we must function at the whim and wish of you and your government above His own?”

It was a heavy challenge the abbess had laid before Blake, insinuating he was interfering with the will of the gods, and Clarke watched his jaw tick as he formulated an appropriate answer.

“I merely ask that you do not let your novitiates—” he flicked a glance at Clarke, his stormy dark eyes connecting with hers unexpectedly, as she had not thought he had noticed her, “—run amok, murdering those who were willing to give up valuable information. Twice now she has interfered with my plans, making it damn near impossible for me to determine who at court is selling secrets to our enemies.”

“Twice?” Clarke blurted out, her voice hard and incredulous at the idea they had met before.

“Odd,” Bellamy said haughtily, turning towards her again. “How at this last meeting you were very willing to spend some, ah,  _quality_ time with me, yet the first night we met, _you_ refused  _me_  twice.”

Bewildered, Clarke frowned, almost sure she had not seen him before last night. Blake was clearly taking pleasure in her confusion, as his lips quirked up into a gloating smile. As she continued to puzzle out what he had meant, he chuckled under his breath and then hunched over. With his back bent and shoulders askew, his doublet billowed out around his stomach in a large puff, giving the illusion of rotundness. The posture hit a nerve in her, and she sucked in a surprised breath.  _The damn farmer._

“I would have expected better from Mortain’s handmaidens,” Blake commented as he straightened, his expression a mix of triumph and disdain. “Both of those men, despite having betrayed Her Grace in the past, were willing to return to the fold and help us uncover the true traitor at court. You and your convent have cost the Duchess precious information with your carelessness.”

Cheeks flushing red with anger, Clarke dug her nails into her palms, resisting the urge to strike him for the insult. Indra was even less pleased, her mouth a thin line of anger.

“ _Might_  have,” Clarke hissed, taking a step forward. “Might have lost. Who knows what they would have been willing to reveal, or even if they were telling you the truth about switching allegiance. Yet again, I would add, as they had been bought out from under you before.”

With three stalking steps, Blake met her toe-to-toe, the anger radiating from him causing her skin to tingle in anticipation. His gaze locked with hers, full of blame and accusation, frustration and anger, and just the slightest hint of fear that had Clarke inhaling sharply, for it spoke of something dangerous and potent, an obsessive devotion that rang undeniably honest and true. Guilt nagged at her, but she shoved it away, too focused on the arrogant set of her new opponent’s shoulders.

“Thanks to you, we will never know now, will we?” He breathed down on her, venom dripping from every word. Contempt flooded through her again, and she seethed at his conceit.

Why couldn’t he see that Mortain’s justice, the justice of a god, was never wrongly handed down, that they were fighting for the same side?

But that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? For whom would dare question the gods?

_Exactly whose side was Bellamy Blake on?_

“Tell them,” he ordered, whipping around to Chancellor Wallace after a tense beat. “Tell them how the Duchess’s position and power are dangling by the thinnest of threads, tell them how her  _life_ —” his voice cracked on that word, and Clarke sharply watched his jaw tick again, this time with anxiety—“is at risk, every minute, until we ferret out the snakes that have invaded court.”

“The abbess is well aware of the situation at hand,” Wallace said slowly.

“Is she?” Blake muttered doubtfully under his breath, so quiet that only Clarke could hear. His face betrayed him, however, for Indra slammed her palm down on the table, startling everyone.

“Do you think we who serve Mortain are blind to what goes on in our country?” She thundered. “Do you think we are ignorant of the way the barons chase after the Duchess like she is the last leg of meat on the platter, salivating at the thought of marrying her to become a ruler? Do you think we are unaware of the French picking away at our borders, waiting for the Duchess to fall so they can swoop in and gobble up the rest of Brittany? Do you think we do not have our Duchess’s and our country’s best interests at heart? Do you believe Mortain would allow such things as these to happen without interfering?”

Clarke was satisfied to see a bit of the color drain from Blake’s face as Indra’s fury finally penetrated his thick air of superiority and stubborn righteousness.

“I am not questioning His judgment, merely those who interpret it and carry it out,” Blake finally ground out. “I have vowed to protect the Duchess from any who wish her harm, laying down my own life if necessary, and I will cut down anyone,  _anyone_  who gets in my way, god-favored or not.”

Underneath the fierce, proud fervor of his baritone voice, Clarke could detect the slightest tenor of desperation, and she considered him more carefully, examining his weary shoulders and tired eyes, wondering what would simultaneously inspire such strong conviction and despairing concern.

“We are not the ones standing in your way,” Indra insisted, her gaze just as assessing. Then a sharp gleam entered her eyes, the one that usually had the novitiates scattering into the far corners of the convent, because it meant the abbess was at her most dangerous. “And to assure you of that, and of our full cooperation in regards to protecting the Duchess, we will happily assign Clarke to your household–disguised as your mistress, of course, to hide her true purpose.”

A choking sound escaped Clarke, and the rushing of blood suddenly roaring in her ears nearly obscured Blake’s outright bark of a laugh.

“You cannot be serious,” he protested loudly.

“You receive an easy way to communicate with us, and we receive, through Clarke’s presence, a more insightful view into the situation at court, which you seem to think we need,” Indra argued, triumph in her voice.

Blake scowled and spluttered, “She is about as subtle as—”

“Clarke is one of our best trainees. She is new to field missions, yes, but I have complete faith that she will live up to expectations.”

The stern look Indra gave her dampened any pleasure Clarke had felt at the initial compliment. She knew this was what Indra had wanted all along—to place her in Blake’s proximity, so she could learn his secrets, his allegiances, his every move and every thought. Even better that Indra had twisted the conversation to make Blake think the convent was doing him a favor. It didn’t comfort Clarke a bit though, because the prickly man rubbed her in all the wrong ways, and the flustering sensation of annoyance he stirred in her belly did not seem to want to subside anytime soon.

“I have never had a mistress,” he grumbled. “No one will believe I have taken one, and certainly not one as green as she.”

Clarke wished she could disagree, but her own actions from the night before proved she was not as skilled as she had presumed. Regardless, she glared at Blake for the dig, nearly suffocating on the insulting retorts that clambered in her throat to be released. Indra wanted this situation to proceed, however, and would not be pleased if she made Blake’s acceptance any more difficult. So she stayed silent, biting the inside of her cheek, using the pain as a distraction.

“She will surprise you, Blake,” Wallace finally piped in. “And she did manage to escape even your tight clutches last night, so I believe that should be sign enough that she is more than capable of the task set before her.”

“It is as if Mortain placed her right in your very path,” Indra added slyly.

Blake narrowed his eyes at the abbess, annoyance washing over his features as he realized exactly what she had just done. By invoking Mortain, and implying that this plan was His will, she had given him no choice but to capitulate, or risk offending a god. While Clarke didn’t like being used as a pawn in this particular game, she couldn’t help but grin at how neatly Indra had trapped him.

“Very well,” he sighed with pained reluctance. “Pack up and meet me by the front gate. We leave in an hour.”

With the barest of bows to Chancellor Wallace and the abbess, and not a single glance in her direction, Blake swept out of the room. Though with all her heart Clarke wished she would never have to see him, his mop of unruly curls, or his proud shoulders ever again, it seemed Mortain did indeed have other plans for the both of them. 

She was going to Arcadia, the host city of the Duchess’s court, and in the irritating company of Bellamy Blake. It would be a miracle–or an intervention of the gods–if she made it there without killing him. 

_Mortain give me strength_ , she thought bitterly as she rose to go pack her things. _Because I am surely going to need it._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke goes on the road with Bellamy, and though their horses’ steps are steady and sure, she cannot say the same for her own, as her companion and the things she finds out about him make her start to question what her purpose in this mission truly will be.

When Blake slowed his horse to a trot as they approached an inn, Clarke sighed in relief. She didn’t let him hear, though; she had no desire to give her unpleasant companion any more reason to dislike her, or think her weak. Riding had always been a favorite pastime of hers, but his constant grim, silent demeanor had made their journey so far almost unbearable. It didn’t help that her bottom ached atrociously from the hours-long ride, as they had been traveling at a breakneck pace since leaving the convent in the early hours of the morning.

They had stopped only once, briefly, when the cold creeping sensation of a lingering soul at the edge of the forest had been too potent for her to ignore. Blake had been annoyed at first, but upon her revealing that it was Shumway’s, he had changed his tune.

_“I have heard the handmaidens of Mortain can speak to souls that have yet to cross over into His realm,” Blake stated abruptly, wheeling his horse around to block hers. “If this is true, it could give us a clue as to what he was willing to tell me if he had lived.”_

_Clarke gave a curt nod, eyes narrowing in suspicion at how he knew one of the convent’s well-guarded secrets. The smirk lingering at the corners of his mouth told her he wasn’t going to reveal the source of that information, and she scowled at him. Dismounting without a word, she walked into the trees to seek out the soul, acutely aware of Blake tailing her every step. With him so close, she had trouble engaging the soul at first, but eventually she pushed through the veil separating the living world from that of the dead._

_Shumway’s remnants rushed her immediately. It reveled in the warmth of her flowing blood and exhaling breaths but then grew agitated when it realized who she was, that it was her hand that had ended its body’s life. Still, she held onto it, forcing the soul to reveal more of its last thoughts to her. The image of the boat appeared before her again, in greater detail this time, but she couldn’t sap more information than that, as the soul was tugging at her own, threatening to drag her permanently into the Mortain’s realm._

_With a rasping gasp, Clarke let the soul go, the world of the living snapping back into vivid color around her. Violently, she shivered, the sudden chill rooted in her very bones numbing her despite the sunlight filtering through the forest trees. A heavy weight fell on her shoulders, and she looked up to find Blake right in front of her, wrapping his traveling cloak around her shaking body._

_“Are you alright?” He asked, brow furrowed with concern. “You look like—well, like death.”_

_His hands reached up and rubbed her shoulders furiously, the friction coaxing her frigid skin back to life. The pressure of his large hands, strong but also careful, had another type of heat stirring in her, one she did not like the feel of, and so she jerked away, lips pursed._

_“I am fine,” she ground out, whipping off the coat to hand it back to Blake, even as she yearned for its warmth as soon as it had left. “He did not tell me much more, just showed me a clearer image of the boat—blue sails, with three interlocked circles.”_

_Blake swore. “He was going to tell us where the French are finding a place to dock their invading fleet.”_

_“We should get back on the road, then,” Clarke said evenly, turning on her heel, her heart falling at the thought of their enemies drawing them ever closer to the brink of war._

Surprisingly, Blake had followed her back to the horses without a word. As they resumed their journey, she had only felt guilty of her rude behavior for a little while, as soon enough he had returned to his sullen, judging silence. By the time they had arrived at the inn, all traces of his earlier apprehension regarding her state of being had disappeared, replaced with crossness at her apparently too-slow pace.

At least the inn and its tavern were busy, allowing the two of them to slip into a corner table unnoticed among the rest of the crowd. They both welcomed the tankards of drink and trough of food provided to them by a harried-looking barmaid, but continued to stew in uncomfortable silence as they ate their dinner.

“How did you know about the souls?” Clarke finally asked, unable to suppress her curiosity any longer. If someone like Blake knew about her convent’s skills, there was no telling who else also was aware. That was something the abbess needed to know, for certain.

“Perhaps your convent is not as mysterious as they want you to believe.”

“It is not a game we play. We do not hide our ways to keep others out.” Clarke retorted. “Secrets are what keep my sisters safe in the field.”

“And you and the convent keep the realm safe in return?” Blake replied flippantly.

“We try,” she shot back.

When he breathed something that sounded like  _try harder_ , Clarke clenched her fists into the material of her black skirt. “You may not like how we operate, or understand it, or know everything about it, but I do. And you have no other choice but to trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

Clarke stared at him, not sure whether to laugh or sneer at his words, words that did not the least bit reflect in his actions so far. They rang with sincerity though, and her mind spun, trying to figure out his angle.

He leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest as he considered her carefully before clarifying, “It is the convent I don’t trust.”

“The convent is merely a tool Mortain uses to carry out His will,” she argued. “Do you claim that He is untrustworthy?”

The raised front legs of his chair slammed down onto the floor as Blake rocked forward, face twisting in frustration, his eyes alight with anger.

“You god-born are all alike, thinking yourselves a class above the rest, that you are not culpable for your actions because they are guided by this hand or that hand. Hiding behind your god, claiming it is His will alone for things working out the way they do, that you do not have a say in what lives you take, isn’t something I will accept. If you don’t have the courage to take responsibility for the hard decisions, then you shouldn’t be preaching the virtues of your convent blindly.”

“I do  _nothing_  blindly!”

“Then you know all of the convent’s secrets? You know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they have told you all you need to know? About Mortain’s will, about your abilities, about your targets?”

Memories flashed before her: her first unexpected encounter with a soul possessing her, the heartbroken look on Maya’s face when she was yet again overlooked for a mission, the doubt that lingered within her after Blake’s revelation regarding Shumway’s possible reversal of loyalties. It set her teeth on edge, that his questioning of the convent and its sisters, who had pulled her out of her darkest place all those years ago, had given her strength and purpose and skill, might not be as forthcoming as she had thought. She could feel his words digging under her skin, burrowing in and making her itch with frustrated indecision.

“I have always acted with Mortain’s blessing,” she snapped. “His marque was clear enough on Shumway—that cannot be denied.”

“Marque?” Blake inquired excitedly, even a bit slyly. “So that is how you identify your targets?”

Clarke bit back a quiet scream, because now he knew another of the convent’s secrets, thanks to her careless slip. Refusing to say another word, she reached for the half loaf of bread still sitting in front of them, ripping off a piece violently before shoving it in her mouth. It grew tasteless as she chewed, her irritation with the trick of a man across from her rising up another notch.  

Blake chuckled. “Welcome to the game, princess.”

Without thinking, she chucked the remaining crust in her hand across the table, nailing him square in the forehead. His burst of laughter after impact shocked her, as did the way her muscles relaxed at the rich, deep sound. He kept surprising her, throwing her off-balance, and if she didn’t regain her footing soon, she would have nothing of worth to send back to Indra.

The thought of failure sobered her, and she looked away from Blake and the teasing glint in his eye, frowning into her lap instead. He quieted as well, even let out a resigned sigh, but she didn’t dare engage him again. The abbess, her sisters, the convent itself were all counting on her to get the better of Blake, for the sake of the country and their god. And for all she knew, he could be the one selling the Duchess’s secrets to the enemy. Her stomach dropped at that possibility, that she had, for a even a slight second, allowed herself to laugh with a possible traitor.

“Well, if it isn’t the realm’s sorriest excuse for a soldier. I’m still surprised Saint Camulos hasn’t smote you yet for daring to wear his sigil,” an unfamiliar voice drawled unexpectedly from her left.

She looked up in time to see Blake lunging up from his seat to take a swing at the blonde-haired knight clad in dirty travel gear at the edge of their table. The knight took a single swing back before pulling her traveling companion into a tight hug, slapping him on the back.

“Good to see you again, Wick,” Blake murmured over the man’s shoulder, his face soft and open in a way Clarke never would’ve expected to see from him.

Two more knights had approached during the first greeting, and Clarke ran an assessing gaze over them: dressed for battle and in equal rank to the blonde knight; also dirty, presumably from travelling a long ways; swords at their sides, though the taller one had an axe as well while the shorter one had a variety of knives, some visible and some intended to be hidden, strapped to him. They were clearly experienced fighters, highly skilled and would probably give her a hell of a time in a fight. Clarke smiled at the thought, because as intimidating as they looked, she figured she would still probably best them both.

Neither of the two other men was smiling as the blonde knight was, but they both still embraced Blake warmly, seemingly well acquainted with him. As she watched their interaction, she sensed eyes on her.

“And who is this?” The blonde knight—Wick, she recalled—asked, curiosity and even a bit of delight in his tone. She smiled in pretend awe at him, allowing years of training take over. Let them think her the country bumpkin, because it would make outsmarting them all the easier if they wrote her off from the beginning.  _People only see what they expect to see._

“My cousin, Clarke Griffin,” Blake said with a forced smile. “I’m to introduce her to court life.”

Wick whipped around to face his friends, grinning even wider than before, if that was possible. “You don’t have a cousin,” he practically sang out.

Blake’s expression darkened, and Clarke thought that maybe this time, he would actually take a real swing at the knight. As they had discussed earlier in the day, she was to try and pass for his cousin; if they were lucky, people at court would take them at their word. More realistically, as mistresses were often passed off as very distant family members, the castle gossips would assume he had taken Clarke on as one. She had insisted it was a messy way of going about it, that there was no need for subterfuge and she should just play the part of mistress from the beginning. However, Blake had been oddly determined to try and pass her off as family first, seemingly uncomfortable at the thought of being subject to the public scrutiny that would come if he seemed to, out of nowhere, take an interest in his own personal life.

She watched his jaw tick as he glared at the amused Wick. “She’s my cousin,” Blake repeated stubbornly, even as the other two men also bit back snickers. Rolling her eyes, because he was being anything but subtle or believable, Clarke decided to intervene.

“Pleased to meet you,” she added in a meek voice as she rose from her seat, dipping into a pretty curtsy while she glanced shyly through her eyelashes at the three newcomers. Wick’s expression became even more intrigued, clearly surprised she was going along with Blake’s excuse. She quirked a coy grin at him, biting her lip as she glanced longingly at Blake. “I am  _very_  much looking forward to my time at court. I expect it will be an absolute pleasure to spend time with my dear cousin.”

Wick laughed and winked at her, realizing she was playing with them, and with Blake too, who was looking both stunned and suspicious at her sudden change in demeanor.

“And it is an absolute pleasure to meet you, Demoiselle Clarke,” Wick replied, grabbing her hand for a quick kiss to her knuckles. “I am Sir Kyle Wick of Waroch.”

He laughed again at her sharp intake of breath— _this_  was the Wick of Waroch she had heard so many stories about? This smiling, joking, jovial man was the one who had rallied the farmers of Brittany to battle during the last war, inspiring them with this furious, brave words and even more courageous, battle-enraged actions such that they actually beat the French back?

“A lot of bark, very little bite,” he whispered conspiratorially under his breath, and Clarke gave him a genuine smile, feeling strangely relaxed around him. He continued in a louder tone, introducing his friends. “This is Sir Nathan Miller and Sir John Murphy, both knights of the Duchess, protectors of the realm, and the most unpleasant fellows one could ever travel with—they don’t bathe and they don’t share their food, the selfish bastards.”

Miller snorted, and Murphy scowled, but Clarke just curtsied and flashed them a quick grin.

“You should try traveling with my cousin,” she said in an overly sweet tone. “He is an absolute delight.”

Wick roared with laughter again, clearly having experienced travelling with Blake before. “I like you. You can stay.”

“Like we have any other choice,” Blake muttered under his breath, expression souring at the teasing.    

Clarke bit back a smile. She would probably pay for that later, but for now, she felt satisfied that she had gotten under his skin, at least for the moment.

“While she will be staying with me at court for a while, I’m afraid my cousin is quite tired from our journey today and cannot stay with us at the moment. In fact, she was just about to retire before you arrived,” Blake added, walking over to firmly grip her arm in the pretense of escorting her upstairs. She fought it for a moment, but the mulish set to his mouth made her give in, not wanting to completely blow their cover from the first, even among his friends. Besides, she was going to sneak back down to eavesdrop the second Blake left her alone anyways. Letting winning this round didn’t really matter.

“Say goodnight, Clarke.”

She curtsied again, smiling with more than a little sincerity at her new acquaintances. Even though they were friends with Blake, and therefore warranted caution, she still felt oddly at ease around them. Blake practically hauled her out of the tavern room as soon as she had wished them farewell, hurrying her up the stairs and into their lodgings. With a blunt  _goodnight_ , he shut the door behind him, clearly anxious to get back downstairs.

Clarke was anxious to return as well, so she didn’t bother to wait more than a few seconds before slipping back out and down the servants’ stairway—a  careless move and a grievous betrayal of her training, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care at the moment. She passed the barmaid and kitchen boys a few coins to let her linger in the backrooms, listening along the wall until she reached the dark pantry and heard the whisper of Blake’s voice coming through the wooden walls.

“Stop laughing, all of you.”

Wick chuckled again, despite Blake’s curt order. “It’s just— _cousin_ , really?”

Miller, or possibly Murphy, said, “Fine time to take a mistress, what with the impeding war in all.”

“The stress is finally getting to him,” the other one joked.

“Why don’t you just go ahead and announce to the entire court that you’re sleeping with her?” Wick jibed. “It’d be faster, and probably cause less gossip than having the entire castle titter about your ‘cousin’ looking at you like she did tonight. If you’re trying to subvert attention, you’re failing. Miserably.”

“If I wanted advice on my personal life, I’d ask, Wick,” Blake snapped. “Until then, be quiet.”

“I’m just trying to help.  _No one_ is going to believe she is your cousin. Or your mistress for that matter, because since when does Bellamy Blake have time for anything but politics?”

“Then take it up with the abbess of Saint Mortain, because she is the one who set up this whole twisted ordeal.”

Clarke froze at his revelation of her identity, and dead silence fell over the conversation. She waited with bated breath, shocked that Blake clearly trusted these men enough to be honest about her identity. Either that, or he cared less about her survival that she had assumed, which was a dangerous mistake on her part, and one she vowed to remember not to make again moving forward.

Finally, one of them let out a low whistle, and then Wick asked quietly, “She’s a handmaiden of Mortain?”

“In all her throat-slitting, poison-bearing, knife-sticking glory.”

The ache in her chest at his words was a surprise. True, her hands had brought death to two men already, and would continue to do so, because they knew how to do all of the things he had described, and do them well; that was her purpose as a daughter of Death. Even so, her fingers trembled at the wariness in his tone, at the slight derision and oddly also the smallest bit of awe.

“Has she been sent to kill you?” Murphy growled, the sound of a blade being drawn accompanying his words.

“She’s here to help me suss out the traitors at court, either those that are willing to turn again and help us or those that are committed to betrayal. Given that she doesn’t kill them first, like she did Shumway.”

Wick swore under his breath at that last revelation, which had Clarke’s stomach rolling with guilt. Shumway had borne the marque, and so was condemned by Mortain to die, as she had always been taught, but the thought that Blake and others had considered him an important link in untangling the web of intrigue surrounding the Duchess did not sit well with her.

“Another dead end,” Miller muttered. “And the news from England isn’t much better.”

“Tell me,” Blake demanded, his tone grim, clearly expecting the worst.

And from what Clarke could tell of the following conversation, he had been right to suppose so. Despite the English prince’s promise of aid to Brittany, a common enemy of France, he had produced nothing substantial for them to rely on: no soldiers, no weapons, and certainly no betrothal agreement. Blake had outright growled at the news of that last disappointment, muttering about how the Duchess’s choices were growing fewer by the second.

“She’ll need to think of something fast to stave off the suitors, Blake, what with the barons now being summoned to court for the convening of the estates.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You didn’t know?”

“She wanted to wait until she had made her final decision,” Blake ground out, and Clarke could easily picture the way his face was probably twisted in fury, his hands coming up to run angrily through his messy curls.

“Then who called the meeting?”

“Whoever is also betraying us to our enemies, and I do not intend to rest until I find out who it is and put a dagger in their heart, or they put one in mine. I swear it on Saint Camulos.”

Clarke’s blood ran cold, because to invoke a vow like that, using your saint’s name, was tempting fate, tempting the gods, an unbelievably dangerous thing to do. Blake was either very brave, or very foolish, to make such a claim. What startled her even more was her inability to determine if she was distressed or impressed by his boldness.

As the talk died down, clearly dampened by the disturbing news from all parties, she slipped out of the pantry and padded back up to her room, figuring there was not much more she could learn tonight. Even though she climbed straight into bed, she did not fall asleep until hours later, Blake’s words keeping her up as they echoed in her ears over and over, a dark, repeating rhythm that fit too well with the beating of her own uncertain heart.

* * *

They were out on the road just after dawn the next morning, Blake looking like he hadn’t slept—his hair was messier than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes had darkened from slate grey to charcoal. Clarke refrained from commenting, however, as she was sure she didn’t look all that rested either; the few hours of sleep she had managed to get were restless and shallow. With the pace he set, possibly even faster than before, she would not have had the energy or concentration to get a word in anyways, tearing as he did down the road leading to Arcadia, with her barely managing to keep up.

It was as if Mortain’s hounds were on his heels, chasing them as they raced back to the Duchess. She herself felt a strangling sense of urgency, and it was what kept her from asking him to stop, even when her hand blisters broke open from chafing against the reins, and her knees grew numb from gripping the saddle so tightly. It was an uncomfortable sensation, that feeling of being the prey instead of the predator, something Clarke hadn’t felt since joining the convent. So she flew along the countryside with Blake, not uttering a single complaint when they traveled for two days straight, only slowing to scarf down quick bites of food or catch an hour or so of sleep.

They were a half-day’s ride from Arcadia when they finally stopped again, at the manor home of Baron Ridley. He welcomed they happily, but his grin was nervous, wary. From the assessing look Blake gave him, Clarke knew he had picked up on their host’s discomfort as well. Still, they allowed him to show them to their rooms, and Clarke took advantage of the time alone to catch up on her sleep.

When she awoke from her nap, it was almost dinnertime, and since they would be dining with nobility, she had no choice but to abandon her plain convent wear for the one nicer dress she had packed for the journey. The rest of her clothing for this mission would arrive in Arcadia soon after she did herself, but for now, she was stuck with the monstrosity that had been packed for her under Indra’s direct orders.

She nearly laughed when she put the thing on, because this was not a dress. It was a scrap of clothing masquerading as appropriate formalwear. The lace-edged neckline dipped obscenely low, rising up to cover only the very outer edge of her shoulders, and the embroidered bodice emphasized her every curve. Thankfully, the skirt was full and the arm sleeves loose, allowing her to stash away some knives in the folds of pink fabric. Gathering her curls, she donned a hairnet adorned with poison beads disguised as pearls, holding it place with pins that were sharp enough to pierce through a man’s spine.

She was grinning at the thought when a firm knock sounded at her door. Opening it revealed Blake, who had changed as well, no longer looking like a man on the run, but the courtier that he was, decked out in black finery and subtle poise that came from being born to nobility. She swallowed thickly at the change, her skin buzzing uncomfortably. Avoiding his gaze, she adjusted her hairnet, gently brushing the beads as a reminder of just how much power she had at the tips of her fingers, common-born or no. Confidence settled over her again, and she looked up to face him.

He stared at her with a nerve-wracking intensity, dark eyes flitting over every inch of her, never lingering too long in any one place as if he couldn’t take all of her in at once. The silence stretched as he shifted, the even lines of his face half-shadowed in the dusky hallway.

“Shall we?” He finally said, extending his arm, even though no one was around to insist on propriety.

Clarke wanted very badly to refuse, because she had scaled the slick walls and walked the crumbling parapets of the convent as part of her training without even a rope to catch her if she fell. She didn’t need a guiding hand to walk her down a flight of stairs. Still, if she was going to be successful at getting inside Blake’s head, she would have to get trick him into thinking she was amenable, that she could obey court rules, that she could play by his book. So, gritting her teeth, she accepted, letting him escort her down to dinner.

When they entered the dining room, she felt his previously relaxed muscles tense, and he stopped short, gaze narrowing in on a tall, striking women with dark hair, dressed in a gown that befit a queen, and chatting animatedly and laughing with a group of ruddy-faced noblemen. Before she could ask what was the matter, the baron shepherded them to the table, though she didn’t miss his gaze darting nervously between the woman and Blake. The woman was seated fairly nearby, but far enough away so that the conversation would not be easily achieved.

That still didn’t stop Blake from sending scathing looks her way. Throughout the first two courses, between desperately wishing she had paid better attention in her etiquette training classes, Clarke puzzled over the reaction. The woman was older, but not elderly, and she supposed it was possible the two had had a former attachment that had soured. Maybe he was still not over her, or even jealous at seeing her entertained by the other men. That didn’t fit with what she had heard about him from his friends, and his own mouth, though; he apparently wasn’t the type to have liaisons of any sort, let alone ones that would end in sore hearts.

If the woman was a threat to the Duchess, and that was what was making Blake so agitated, then maybe she would bear a marque. Craning her neck, as if looking for the next course, Clarke slid a focused glance at the woman, but she saw no black smudge anywhere. Of course it could be hidden by her voluminous dress, but there was no way for Clarke to find that out that wouldn’t cause a ruckus, something she needed to avoid unless absolutely necessary.

As she watched Blake stab at the meat on his plate out of the corner of her eye, she supposed she could just ask him later who the woman was. She didn’t like the idea of relaying on him for information, especially when his own loyalties were in question, but strangely, he was the only one here whom she would believe most. She almost snorted in disbelief at the thought, thankfully catching herself before she drew the table’s attention. Blake, however, seemed to not care about garnering notice, as he scoffed very audibly after the woman commented on how court was so very tiresome, especially when she was grieving.

“And so you retired to the country to soothe your grief, did you, Madame?” He called out loudly, hand gripping his wine goblet so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

“A little peace and quiet does the soul good,” she responded lightly, her gaze only flickering briefly to Blake before returning to her neighbor.

“Peace and quiet you may find in the country, but as we can see here, it can be as sociable as court. Solitude, I feel, is the best remedy for a mourning soul.”

His words spoke of jealousy, but his tone dripped with cold reprimand. The woman’s mouth pursed, and she cracked a grin, though she appeared more like a wolf baring its teeth than a lady smiling.

“To each his own—I’m sure everyone here at this table would have a different opinion on how to deal with losing a loved one, just as they would have different advice to give the Duchess on how to solve her current political predicaments, wouldn’t you say, Baron?”

“I leave the political scheming to Blake, my lady,” Ridley said, dabbing the sweat from his neck with a napkin. “He is a far better player at it than I am.”

Blake was not to be diverted by their host’s nervous compliment, however, his brow furrowing stormily as he continued his attack. “Pray tell, do give us your opinion on the Duchess’s situation. If you have a good way to settle her betrothal situation without offending half of our own lords or sending the French down on us, I’m positive she would be ecstatic to hear it,” he said stonily.

“Well, if only she could opt out of her position, then she would be free to marry whomever she chooses, within reason. But alas, a Duchess has a duty to her country, and she relinquishes her free will in exchange for the power that position gives her. A pity, for such a young girl to have such a heavy weight on her shoulders.”

If the goblet in front of Blake was glass instead of metal, Clarke was sure his grip would have shattered it by now. “It is not her fault for being born to such a position, yet she still bears the weight anyways,” he snapped.

“Heavy lies the head,” Ridley chortled, a disturbing enough sound to finally jerk Blake out of his furious trance. He stared down at his practically untouched plate of food, mutinously pushing some of the pieces around. She watched him fume silently as the rest of the group resumed conversation in quiet, tentative voices, catching the woman gazing at him out of the corner of her eye. She looked just as furious, but there was a pain in the shadow of her stare, something that had Clarke curious and aching at the same time.

After making sure no one was paying them much attention anymore, she reached over, keeping her hand below the level of the table, and gently grasped Blake’s elbow, squeezing it, in warning or in solidarity, she wasn’t sure. He tensed at the pressure, but he didn’t nudge her hand away, just kept staring at his plate.

When he put down his fork, not even pretending to have an appetite anymore, Clarke faked a large yawn, one that would have had her etiquette instructor cringing at the impropriety of executing in company such as this, but the relieved released of breath Blake let out as he caught on to her plan was worth the breach. Tucking his napkin away, he rose, and she followed suit. She stifled a real yawn this time as he made excuses to the baron about needing to retire, as they would be departing early in the morning.

“And you said I lacked subtlety,” she muttered as soon as they had passed into the hall. “What was that little verbal spat about?”

“You do not know who that was, do you?” He shot back, a strange sort of bitter smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.

Clarke didn’t reply, not liking the way he kept being one step ahead of her, even after the atypical lack of control he had just displayed at dinner.

Chuckling, he supplied, “That is Madame Aurora.” When Clarke didn’t react, he continued. “The Duchess’s mother.”

Clarke opened her mouth in surprise, a little dissatisfied than she hadn’t made the connection between the name and their ruler faster.  _Madame Aurora_  had been on everyone’s lips six months ago when her daughter had been brought to the castle and named heir to the then-dying Duke. Though born illegitimately and hidden away for sixteen years, she was the only child he had produced during his long rule. Family members further down the line of inheritance had argued against the change in succession by questioning the legitimacy of her parenthood, angry that their chance at grabbing power had been ripped away by someone they considered a child. There had been no denying the connection, however, as several witnesses had come forward to confirm the timeline, and besides, it was rumored that the Duchess’s likeness to her father was unparalleled. And despite the Duke’s poor health, he had been deemed mentally competent enough to declare her his heir.

She had taken up the throne a few weeks later when he finally passed away, and a girl who had spent her whole life hiding was now on a pedestal for everyone to see, and to try to tear down.

“Madame Aurora,” Clarke repeated, quickly trying to recall what else she knew about the woman, feeling oddly motivated to prove her worth to Blake. “Ah, the French whore.”

Blake’s fingers dug into her arm, almost painfully. “Why do you call her that?”

When she looked at him, his face was twisted into something disdainful, almost disappointed. Clearing her throat, she realized she had misstepped, but not how, and clarified, “We didn’t learn that in lessons, but the girls at the convent used to call her that. She was the mistress to the former French king when she was much younger, was she not, before she became attached to the Duke?”

“Ah,” Blake muttered, his voice sharp and bitter. “Well, let me be clear then. If the French whore is the Duchess’s mother, than she is also mine.”

Clarke’s heart plummeted and her stomach clenched, as her mind belatedly allowed the last remembered bit about Aurora to fall into place: rumors that her son—one produced from an attachment that had come after the French king but before the Duke—had been the person to bring everything to light. He had snuck his sister into the capital in the dead of night, insisting to speak with the Duke himself before telling anyone else his purpose, promising to single-handedly bringing hell down on the castle if he didn’t get such an audience.

Bellamy Blake was that son, which meant he was also half-brother to the Duchess.

His fervent loyalty, the persistent pursuit of keeping her and the country safe, and his overbearing suspicious nature all fell into place. Speechless, she turned to look at him, not even sure where to begin. From the tightness around his mouth and eyes, she guessed an apology would be a good start, but when they reached her door, her gave her a stiff bow and stormed off, and her thoughts were too sluggish to be quick enough to call him back.

Biting her lip, she entered her room, slumping against the closed door and sliding to the floor, her dress billowing all around her. Frustration and regret filled her instead, eating at her confidence. Barely a week since she had left the convent, and she no longer knew up from down, left from right, and it infuriated her. She had known this mission would not be easy, but it was not supposed to be this hard either.

So, as she sat there in the dark, unfamiliar room, listening the muffled sounds of strangers laughing waft up from the rooms below and trying to piece through what she knew and what she didn’t, she prayed to Mortain to guide her hand more steadily, because at this point, any arrow she let fly would most assuredly go astray, something she could not afford in this already fragile game. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving at Arcadia should makes things easier, but danger to Clarke, her mission, and Bellamy only increases from the minute they step inside the city, and, after meeting the players at court, Clarke begins to realize just how enormous her task of deciding loyalties will be.

The city gateway rose up before them, towering into the pale blue sky, and the midday sun peaked above the tips of the castle towers in the distance. Clarke tried not to gape; she had seen sketches of cities before, in her lessons, and had even traveled to a nearby town as part of her training. Still, none of that held a candle to Arcadia.

People poured through the wide mouth of the gate, moving in, moving out, a mere snapshot of the bustling life inside the massive stone walls protecting the city. Horses nearly trampled those walking on foot, but the caravans carrying all sorts of goods to sell were the most dangerous, plowing forwards, as greedy as their drivers. A hundred sounds—traders’ shouts, pigs snorting, the laughter of children, carts creaking—nearly drowned out Blake as he called over his shoulder to her.

“You play the country bumpkin well. But I suggest you close your mouth—that may be a little much, even for this crowd.”

Though she scowled at his jesting, she couldn’t bring herself to be truly upset with him. She was too pleased to be in such a place so lively, and one that would most likely make her work a lot easier, what with the number of people available to glean information from, and to hide among.

It helped that her companion had relaxed as well, for upon seeing the city walls his shoulders had immediately fallen, the tension draining out of him with every hoof beat that brought them closer to his home and his sister. He had even apologized earlier for being so short with her about his mother the previous night. She had returned the favor, because she was at fault as well, and the way the worry lines around his eyes softened at her words made the silence during their ride bearable instead of uncomfortable like she had anticipated.

“Well, you are playing the know-it-all courtier so well, I felt I needed to keep up,” she quipped.

He cocked his eyebrows before nudging his horse with his heels, pushing them further into the melee of the crowd. Just as they finally reached the gate, demanding trumpets sounded behind them, followed by the thundering noise of racing horses. Blake swore, trying to back his own mount out of the way, and Clarke struggled to do the same.

They barely made it before the approaching troupe rushed past, fierce horses and fiercer riders blowing by in a blur of dark green and gold. In the middle was the largest of them, bald and cruel eyes, his hand roughly pulling on his horse’s mouth as his spurs dug deeply into the animal’s sides.

“Count Tristan Forestier,” Blake muttered darkly, his tone confirming her initial impression that this man was not only trouble, but also dangerous and an enemy.

The count nearly bowled over a poor farmer who had gotten trapped in their path, not casting a second glance as the man fell to the ground. Seething in indignation, Clarke leapt off of her horse and darted forward to help him, even as Blake called after her in protest.

As she reached him, pulling him back to his feet, a screeching whinny sounded above her. Looking up, she saw hooves flailing and mane flying in the sunlight. She dodged out of the way in time to just miss the rearing horse descending, but she clearly heard the rider, a female, swear loudly at the near collision.

Then she froze, the familiar tone of that voice washing over her. And indeed, when she fixated on the rider, she recognized the long chestnut hair fixed into a high bun and the brown eyes that were never quite as fierce as the voice that belonged to the girl whom Clarke considered her closest friend.

_Raven._

Raven, her best friend (and maybe, if Mortain didn’t own their hearts, someone who could have been more to her) who took one look at her and froze for a split second, horror etched on her face that quickly twisted into a sneer as voices calling to her sounded from beyond the gate.

“Watch yourself, peasant,” she spat, circling her horse violently around Clarke and the fallen farmer. “Or you may find yourself in the realm of Mortain sooner than you expect.”

As Raven rode away, worry gripped Clarke. Too easily she could read the darkness in her friend’s eyes, the haunted shadows there too reminiscent of how she had been all those years ago. She and Maya had chased away that darkness over the years, and to see it take root again set Clarke’s nerves on edge.

She chose to hold onto the quiver in her friend’s voice, however, as it sung with sincerity that contradicted her barbed words. Raven had always excelled at the subterfuge portions of their training, her intelligent mind thriving in the world of double meanings and hidden messages. Clarke could only hope this crueler version of her friend was merely a façade, and that her threat wasn’t that, but rather a veiled warning.

_Death awaits you here_ , it seemed to say, and Clarke grimaced, pulling the farmer to safety, realizing she was absolutely right.

After a steadying breath, she checked out the man briefly, ignoring her companion’s annoyed huffs and the impatient pacing of his horse. When she sent the man on his way and then remounted, Blake glared at her, but there was interest there as well frustration.

“What?” She snapped, not liking the feel of his scrutiny after the freedom from it during the past few hours of their recent, uneasy truce.

“You have a healer’s knowledge.”

So lost in seeing Raven for the first time in months, Clarke hadn’t even realized she had unconsciously pulled upon her familial expertise. She had helped out in the convent’s infirmary time to time when it was needed, but in the last year or so, she had solely focused on her assassin’s training. Thus her healing skills had fallen by the wayside. A sharp pang ran through her, as she thought of her mother for the first time in a while, but she shoved it aside, schooling her face into a neutral expression, not wanting to reveal something so personal to Blake.

“You need to know how the body heals itself if you want to inflict a fatal wound successfully,” she replied without feeling.

Blake’s face hardened, though the doubtful set of his mouth told her he didn’t quite buy her coldness. Still, without a word, he spun his horse around and rode through the gate, not even looking back to see if she would follow. But follow she did, though it grated her nerves to have the weight of his judgment on her again.

Soon enough he pulled off of the main road, guiding them quickly down winding streets, turning this way and that. It was difficult, but Clarke managed to remember the pattern, secretly pleased that her tracking skills were not as rusty as she had expected. Clearly Blake was trying to avoid being followed, and Clarke glanced behind them, seeing no one that had been at the gate. Still, as they rode down streets that were more and more deserted, she couldn’t help but feel they were being watched, and the tense straightness of Blake’s back told her she wasn’t being paranoid.

Lost in her concern, she nearly missed it when he suddenly turned down a side alley.

“Are you sure this is the best decision?” She hissed, not liking the way the walls on either side were so confining.

“Be quiet,” he muttered back. “I’m trying to lose—”

Two figures clothed in black dropping from the roofs above interrupted him, rushing down the alley with deadly accuracy. Clarke let out a small cry as Bellamy’s horse reared forward, trying to fend them off. It worked—hooves connected with one of the attacker’s heads, knocking him to the ground unconscious—until a third figure dropped directly on Blake, dragging him from the horse.

Soft thumps behind her had Clarke spinning around, grimacing as two more assailants cornered them in. Swinging one leg over the saddle pommel, she dismounted facing forward so as to not lose sight of her opponents, pulling out her knives as they palmed their own. She could have sworn one of them let out a disbelieving laugh before he lunged towards her but she ducked and swiveled, making sure to get her back against the wall. A quick glance told her Blake was handling himself well against the other remaining two, so she prepared to take down her own assassins.

Her attackers were lazy, giving half-hearted swipes, wrongly thinking a woman wouldn’t be able to defend herself. With a feral grin, Clarke made her first offensive move, taking the closest man off-guard. He parried, not well though, and she moved forward continuously, her arms a whirlwind of grey fabric and silver steel. When her dagger finally sliced across his belly, tearing through flesh to the vital organs below, he staggered back in surprise. Then he fell to the ground, moaning, and his partner hissed in fury.

This one was more wary after seeing his friend fall. His assault was more committed, more ferocious, so by the time Clarke found her opening and plunged the blade into his exposed neck, her every muscle ached from the effort. As she straightened, stepping back to avoid the spurt of blood that came with retrieving her knife, she felt the muscles in her upper arm pull painfully, a stinging, tingling sensation spreading across her heated skin.

One of the attacker’s blades must have nicked her. Just as she reached up to probe the cut, a pained cry sounded from behind her. She whipped around, heart in her throat as she hoped it wasn’t Bellamy.

Relief washed over her when she saw him still standing in one piece, towering over one of the fallen assailants. The man was moaning, clutching at his belly, which was spurting blood, and convulsing, a white foam beginning to bubble out of his mouth. Bellamy just stood there watching, a shaken look on his face as she started down at the assassin. He held one of their knives in his trembling grip, which was growing looser by the second.

Clarke raced forward, nearly tripping over his other kill, until she was by his side and crouching down beside the injured man. A sharp sour smell rose from him, and she snatched the knife from Bellamy’s grip, sniffing at it.

“Poison,” she uttered, her heart twisting as the man—boy, really, now that she noticed, his mask having fallen off in the fight—writhed in pain. He was so young, and he had tried to kill them, but the pleading look in his eye had her breath catching in her throat, and suddenly she understood Bellamy’s paralysis.

Before her eyes, a dark smudge bloomed on the boy’s neck, radiating out from the point where a vein throbbed underneath his sweaty skin. Closing her eyes in understanding, Clarke sucked in a deep breath before leaning forward and cleanly, swiftly, firmly sliding the knife into his flesh, a gurgling stream of crimson pouring out after she removed the blade. A flash of memories assaulted her ( _wine on the stone floor of the abbess’s office, her mother lying in a red pool)_ , and she swayed as she stood.

“You’re okay,” a quiet voice murmured into her ear.

As she shook off the haze of pain long past, she registered a warm steadiness at her back and at her hips, bracing her carefully. Turning, she found herself a breath away from Bellamy, his dark eyes searching hers, concerned and proud and a bit intimidated. The sheer force of his focus nearly had her wobbling again, but he caught her once more, by her shoulders this time. She hissed at the pressure it put on her wound, and immediately Bellamy’s expression darkened as he pulled his bloodstained palm away.

“You’re hurt,” he said almost accusingly, as if offended she hadn’t told him.

“I’m fine.”

“You could be poisoned.” The panic in his voice twisted like a knife in her chest, sliding through her as easily as her own blade had slid through that boy’s neck. It hurt, in all the wrong ways.

Placing a reassuring hand on his sternum, she pushed him back, pursing her mouth determinedly. “If the blade was poisoned, I would already be dead, given how fast it worked on him. I’m fine,” she insisted, stepping out of his reach. There was no need to tell him about her immunity; he would not get that secret from her, at least not yet.

His hand stayed suspended in the air for half a second before it dropped back to his side. She didn’t miss the way it flexed, or the way his expression shuttered at her retreat.

“We can take that one for questioning, if he’s not dead,” he stated, brushing past her, the heavy air of responsibility and duty settling over his shoulders, cloaking him in taciturn indifference once again.

Clarke sighed at the change, feeling oddly adrift without his heat surrounding her but also relieved to be back to business. Once she looked over the man who had gone down first, she nodded briefly, telling her partner that he indeed was still alive. They made quick work of tying him up and hauling him over the back of Bellamy’s horse. Once they had secured him and remounted, they set off for their lodgings.

It wasn’t until they had nearly reached the castle entrance that Clarke came to the disturbing realization that the most shocking part of the entire ordeal was that, somewhere in the middle of that chaos, she had started thinking of her companion using his given name.

_Bellamy_ , she mouthed silently, her mouth curving upwards at the way the syllables rolled off of her tongue.

It might be a little while before she could call him that to his face—because of propriety, or her own pride—but this, this private habit of hers, might just be enough for now.  

* * *

With a dull thud, her knife stuck into the wooden doorframe that faced her bed, and Clarke frowned. Her aim was off.

She flung another blade, which placed slight better than the last. Sighing, because she only had one more, she let that fly too before hauling herself off of the bed to retrieve them all. As she pulled them from the wood, struggling with the last few, she tried not to let her irritation rise, because picturing Bellamy’s face where her knives were lodging themselves was probably taking the situation a bit too far.

When they had arrived at his rooms, he had quickly informed his housekeeper that his ‘cousin’ was extremely drained from the journey there, possibly even sick, and should by no means leave her room, for fear of making her condition worse.

Clarke had nearly clouted him over the head right then and there, because while it was possible he was still concerned over her injury from the fight, his attempt to keep her confined was more likely due to his worry she would start assassinating people left and right—never mind that there was a precision and direction to it. This was his way of controlling her. It made her want to yell at him in an obscene fashion, but the sincere concern of the housekeeper—who had not even batted an eye at the unconvincing way Bellamy had called her ‘cousin’, bless the woman—guilted her into going along with the story. Even so, after a minute of slight shock at the size of her chambers, she began to seethe after the housekeeper slipped out of the room.

Her anger had not abated the slightest since then. Settling back on the bed, she started another round of target practice, though was already bored with it. Her first day in the castle she figured she should at least keep up the pretense of cooperating, though her patience with doing so was wearing thin.

It almost wore all the way through when a soft knock at the door, which she naively responded to, turned into a dozen women flooding her room, carrying baskets of thread, needles, and pins, and a large stack of pre-made dress patterns.

“Sir Blake has arranged to have some garments made for you to wear until your own things arrive. We will take measurements for all the necessities later, as the ball tonight and the gown you’ll need for it takes precedence,” the housekeeper chimed as she quickly pushed Clarke behind a screen, signaling her to disrobe.

Giving her a pained smile (it wasn’t  _her_  fault Bellamy was a sneaky bastard), she obeyed, stripping down to nothing and hiding her weapons among her balled up clothing. She tried not to think about how she was here, stepping onto the pedestal to play dress-up, while he was doing the work her hands itched to do. At this very moment, he was probably questioning the assailant they had captured. She, on the other hand, was being poked and prodded as the tailor’s assistants used her as a living mannequin. As her limbs were moved this way and that, making room for needle and thread and more fabric, her thoughts drifted from her annoying partner to her encounter with Raven.

_What was she doing here, especially with the Forestier entourage? Was that her mission, to infiltrate the count’s household? But why? What was the connection?_

Vague recollections of stories—none of them pleasant—surrounding the Forestier household flickered in her mind, but they were merely rumors, whispered tales told during late nights in the dormitories. In fact, while she could recall a solid history about most of the estates that were being summoned for the convening, she could not remember that much about Forestier. It seemed odd to her, because if Bellamy considered him an enemy, then the convent most certainly would too. The novitiates should’ve known all about those who wished them, the old ways, and the gods harm.

The natural way she now aligned Bellamy’s interests with her own startled her out of her thoughts, because there was no evidence to suggest that they were on the same side.  _He could still be the enemy_ , she chided herself, even as other voices in her head argued for his guiltlessness. Shaken at the strength of those protesting voices, she lost track of how much time had passed, and soon enough, she was being spun around to face the mirror, the final product assembled on her person.

Clarke had never cared for fine things—as a child, her clothes were simple and cheap, and often stained with herb mixes, vomit, or sometimes blood, occurrences which only increased after she started training at the convent. Any finery she wore there was to hide herself, the costumes so ostentatious and overdone that whoever saw her would remember the dress or the baubles and not the figure who bore them. Nothing had ever been hers, and nothing had ever been made  _for_  her.

So her breath caught when she looked in the mirror and saw herself decked out in a gown sewn for just her arms, her shoulders, her chest, her waist. Midnight blue with shots of embroidery thread in a lighter shade that matched her eyes, the fabric was adorned with no lace, no other embellishments than the simple stitching and a cord of gold rope that lined the collar and waist, tracing down in a triangular cut to the hem. She could breathe in this dress, the fabric flexible and soft, moving with her as she moved. Luckily, billowing sleeves were in fashion, and she smiled, thankful that the current trends were amenable to her hiding weapons in their usual fashion.

Soft hands tugged at her hair, and she realized the housekeeper had gathered up her curls, piling them on top of her head, smiling into the mirror as she caught her eye.

“You look stunning,” she whispered conspiratorially.

Clarke blushed at her words, but then an image Indra’s sneering face flashed across her vision. Pride did not sit well with those from the convent, and she suddenly jerked away, fisting her hands into the delicate fabric of her dress’s skirt in panic.  

The woman gave her a sympathetic, knowing look before quickly ushering the other ladies out of the room. Taking a minute to compose herself, Clarke set her mouth into a firm line before stepping back into sight of the mirror. Dispassionately, she ran over her appearance again, not letting herself indulge in the fantasy that she was actually a politician’s mistress going to a ball.

She was an assassin, sent here to ascertain the loyalty of a suspect member of the Duchess’s council and report the status of the court back to the convent. She was a handmaiden of Mortain, a tool molded and trained for Him to use to exact his judgement and justice upon those who strayed outside his mercy.

Striding over to her discarded clothing from earlier, she quickly rearmed herself, strapping on knives and blades in all the usual concealed places, fastening the bag of poisons disguised as perfumes to her belt, sliding her garrote onto her wrist. Strength flooded her as she felt the kiss of steel against several of her pulse points, the weapons a comfort after such a strange wave of longing to be just a blushing girl in a ball gown.

* * *

Clarke and her fellow novitiates were more than aware that life at the convent was one of simplicity, their surroundings stark and their material things crafted with only practicality in mind. They embraced that ideal, made it their everyday reality despite knowing that many of their countrymen, even some of those devoted to the other gods, lived a very different type of life. Still, not even the most imaginative of them could have conjured up the lavish spectacle that greeted her when she entered the ball at Bellamy’s side later that night. Opulent didn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere in the crowded room: jeweled dresses, engraved goblets, embroidered doublets, enormous tapestries, towering headpieces, gilded sconces. The finest music played, and the sweetest wine was served, the sounds and smells momentarily overwhelming even her well-trained senses.

Despite the onslaught of affluence, Clarke was not impressed for long, however, as she couldn’t decide what was stuffier: the air or the people. Conversations with those unimportant to her mission were dull, and Bellamy had yet to cross paths with anyone of interest to her. She sorely wished she could strike out on her own, but that would garner scandalous attention that would only hurt her mission. So she remained by his side as he made the rounds around the room, smiling and curtsying and making inane small talk when it was required, hating every minute of it.

Idly, she wondered exactly how the Duchess was funding an event like this, as it was no secret the royal treasury was approaching broke. It was part of the Duchess’s problem. If she had money, she could purchase troops to defend Brittany against the greedy French, but with the coffers so empty, she was forced to rely on assistance and loyalty bought with her hand in marriage instead of with coin. Yet this night and its extravagance painted a very different picture.

When she asked Bellamy about it, he shrugged. “Just because everybody knows it, doesn’t mean we have to act like it.”

“Well, that seems like an idiotic way to go about it. Why bother with the façade if it only makes the situation worse?”

“Because then suitors will have proof of the situation, and proof can be used as leverage in a negotiation, something the Duchess absolutely needs to avoid if she is to even have half a chance at a fair betrothal arrangement.”

“People see what they want to see,” Clarke murmured, the convent’s mantra coming to her unconsciously.

“Well said.”

She resisted a shiver from the way Bellamy’s rough voice, spoken only a breath away from her ear, caused her stomach to clench, stirring up that storm of heat again, the one she had felt earlier that night when he had fallen speechless at seeing her dressed for the ball, the one that had only grown stronger as his hand rested on her lower back for most of the night, escorting her here and there around the room.

He was doing an excellent job at keeping up their pretense as lovers, and Clarke only hoped she was playing her part just as well. Just as she threw him a flirtatious smile to even the playing field, his eyes blinking slowly as he took it in, they were interrupted.

“Ah, Blake, finally returned to court I see.”

Bellamy smiled at the approaching pair—one a woman with calculating eyes and dressed without adornment and the other a solider, friendly looking and clad in formal chainmail—but the smile was perfunctorily, respectful, sincere but not affectionate. Clarke did the same, reserving judgment as she tried to guess whom these acquaintances were.

“You missed me, then,” he jested, but the woman who had spoken did not look amused. “And I am not inclined to leave again, seeing as how things seem to fall apart when I am not around.”

“The Privy Council managed just fine in your absence,” the woman ground out.

“Then I guess I was not aware you had decided to move up the convening of the estates, unless someone called it without your permission. But who would dare to do that and cross you? My mistake.”

Clarke bit back a grin, because the woman’s cold expression grew even more frigid, clearly unimpressed with Bellamy’s jibes. With a brief nod, she departed, sweeping away into the crowd, which parted before her easily.

“Well, even if Anya is not enthusiastic about your return, I know the Duchess is more than pleased to have you back behind the castle walls,” the solider said kindly.

Every line of Bellamy’s body relaxed at the mention of his sister, and something sharp and longing twisted in Clarke at sensing that change.

In a soft, fond voice, he replied, “I am anxious to see her. As soon as I can escape these vultures, I will go visit her.”

“And you brought her a surprise, I see?” The soldier prompted as his eyes fell on Clarke.

Clearing his throat, Bellamy hurriedly said, “Right. This is my—cousin, Demoiselle Clarke Griffin. Clarke, this is Captain David Miller—Sir Miller’s father.”

With a bob of her head, Clarke swept into a slight curtsy, taking the opportunity to step on Bellamy’s foot in admonishment. If he kept tripping over her introduction—every single time he faltered on that same word—then there was no point in using that pretense. Unless he was doing it on purpose, but she didn’t think he was that conniving.

His boot tip wiggled under the sole of her foot in annoyance, and by the time she straightened, he was digging his fingers into her side.

“A pleasure,” she murmured, ducking her gaze in mock shyness.

She kept up that appearance as the two men conversed, letting her eyes glaze over as if she was overwhelmed, though in truth she was listening intently to their conversation. In hushed tones, they speculated who on the Privy Council had gone against the Duchess’s wishes and called the estate meeting early. Miller ruled out Chancellor Wallace as he was still traveling, as well as Marshal Anya, whose prickliness was probably more due to being outsmarted by their betrayer than any guilt.

“That leaves Madame Diana,” Bellamy sighed.

“I doubt she would betray Her Grace’s confidence like that,” the captain argued. “She is particularly close to her, being her governess and all.”

Bellamy shrugged. “I suppose it also could have been—speak of the devil,” he finished with a dark mutter under his breath as a man with short brown hair and an arrogant gleam in his eyes joined their group.

“Emerson, still lurking about I see,” he said in a louder voice, not even trying to keep the animosity out of his tone.

“I would never abandon my post, or France’s charge.”

“The Duchess is no one’s charge,” Bellamy snapped, his eyes flashing dangerously.

“The Mountain War treaty says otherwise,” Emerson gloated.

Clarke clutched at Bellamy’s arm as she felt him shift forward, as if readying himself to attack. Emerson must be the leech of an ambassador he had complained endlessly about on their journey, sent by their enemy to keep an eye on the Duchess’s plans for marriage to ensure she ended up with no one strong enough to allow her to challenge France. Now she understood Bellamy’s dislike, and though she looked the man over for Mortain’s marque, none was present. So she just squeezed his arm again, willing him to keep his head. With a deep breath, and what looked like a thankful glance down at her, he swallowed, forcing a smile onto his face.

“And as soon as Octavia is officially crowned duchess, she will have no need for you and your country’s service or scrutiny, and you can burn that treaty you keep holding over all of our heads, despite its questionable origins.”

A red flush crept up Emerson’s neck, rolling past the edge of his collar as his eyes narrowed in on Bellamy. “Take care, Blake—one day your tongue, as silver as it is, just might bring more trouble to the Duchess’s door than she can withstand.”

“And yet I will still be there, standing between her and whoever wishes her harm,” Bellamy shot back.

With a sneer as his response, Emerson turned on his heel, slithering back to wherever he had come from, and Clarke breathed easier upon seeing him depart.

“You are just driving them off left and right tonight,” Captain Miller remarked, both amusement and censure in his voice.

“It’s a unique skill,” Bellamy replied dryly. “I should teach you some time.”

That got a chuckle out of the captain, and even Clarke couldn’t keep from smiling.  

“I think we must leave you, captain,” he continued. “I should try and see my sister before it gets too late.”

“Good to see you back in one piece, Blake,” Captain Miller said, clapping Bellamy on the shoulder affectionately. “Make sure you stay that way. And it was lovely to meet you, Demoiselle Clarke.”

She nodded in farewell and then followed Bellamy as he wove his way through the crowd. At one point, she almost lost him as a group of women cut in front of her, but she lunged forward and grabbed the back of his shirt, cutting them off instead. They tittered in annoyance, but she didn’t even bother apologizing. Neither did she let go of him until a minute later when, without even a glance backwards, Bellamy reached behind and loosened her fingers from their grip on the fabric, instead twining them with his own. His palm was as rough as hers, calloused and dry and well worked. It was an odd sensation, brushing against skin that had known as much pain and perseverance as her own, and goosebumps rose on her arm at the contact.

“Damn,” he breathed suddenly, stopping short.

“What is it?” Clarke asked, but she answered her own question by following the direction of his stare.

A raucous group all clad in shades of forest green bordered the ballroom’s exit, and she recognized the rough-looking men and women as part of Forestier’s entourage. The count himself was lounging against the left wall, twirling a knife between his fingers menacingly. The rest of the ball-goers gave them a wide berth, but anyone who wanted to leave would have to pass through their cluster.

“You were hoping to avoid him,” Clarke observed shrewdly.

“Wholeheartedly,” Bellamy ground out, even as he started forward again, still towing Clarke behind him.

As they approached the group, he looked out the side of his eye at Tristan, nodding stiffly in reluctant greeting. Tristan did not return the nod, just stared, hatred in his eyes.

Clarke was beginning to understand Bellamy’s paranoia, because from what she had seen tonight, she could count on just one hand the number of people who actually liked him at court. Whether she included herself in that list was yet to be decided—

A flash of silver caught her attention, and without thinking, she reached out and snatched the thrown blade out of the air, twisting it around and away from Bellamy’s face.

The group around them froze, staring at Clarke in surprise and suspicion.

“If you attempt to murder someone, I would advise doing it where there were less witnesses,” Bellamy quipped in a seeming nonchalant tone, but the vise-like grip his hand had on hers told her he was feeling otherwise.

“Just checking your reflexes,” Tristan replied, smirking. “Though it seems hers are better. And you are, mademoiselle?”

“Clearly someone who could best you in a knife fight,” Clarke spat without thinking.

Bellamy’s grip grew even tighter on her hand, if that was possible, and his mouth slipped into a disapproving but also worried frown. Tristan, on the other hand, looked at her with outright murder in his eyes, even pushing off the wall to loom over her.

“Back off,” Bellamy said sharply, stepping between them. “She’s a country lass, indulged by her father. They do things differently out there. She meant no offense.”

_I most certainly did_  teetered on the tip of her tongue, but the dangerous gleam in Tristan’s eye forced the words back down. If he was daring enough to try to hit Bellamy with a thrown knife in the middle of a ball, just for being in his proximity, there was no telling what he would do upon a direct challenge. Clarke knew she was good, a better fighter than most soldiers or knights, but the cruel air that surrounded Count Forestier made him unpredictable, and she wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t win.

“A little girl with big words should have the courage to back them up,” Tristan scoffed, but he retreated back to the wall, smiling smugly as he companions guffawed at his insult.

Bellamy just tugged her through the door, and she was too numb with anger—and, if she was being honest, a little bit of fear—to resist. They walked in tense silence until, with two floors and countless doors between them and the count, he finally spoke.

“You can see why I don’t want him marrying my sister.”

“He’s one of her suitors?” Clarke said, aghast.

“He is giving it his most valiant effort, though it is clear as day that all he wants is the power of the duchy. He could care less about Octavia, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.”

“She cannot agree to such a betrothal.”

“Besides a verbal agreement with the previous Duke about a betrothal agreement, he brings with him five thousand soldiers, a quarter of whom are cavalry. He is by far the best option for keeping the country safe.”

“And certainly the worst possible choice for a husband.”

Bellamy didn’t respond, but his silence told her that that fact did not matter. Gratitude for the convent and the opportunities it had provided for her welled up in Clarke’s chest, as she vaguely imagined what type of future might have awaited an orphaned fourteen-year-old who had no one in the world looking out for her.

“There must be others,” she said, weak hope in her voice.

Bellamy sighed wearily, clearly having had this conversation before, possibly even with his own sister—a heartbreaking thought. “Every choice the French have put forth has been unacceptable, the men either four times Octavia’s age or without the sufficient accompanying protective assets, obviously done purposefully to undermine her rule. Anybody else they would object to, for obvious reasons, and even though we have risked contacting more suitable options—Wick, Miller, and Murphy were actually just returning from negotiations with the English prince, who gave them nothing more than empty promises, and I have sent inquiries to the Holy Roman Emperor, who is more than likely too embroiled in his own wars to come to our aid—no one has proved available.”

“She is truly stuck, then.”

“Until I figure a way out of this mess. And I will forge one with my bare hands if I have to.”

Again, that burning conviction crept into his voice, an almost otherworldly fervor that chilled Clarke to the bone.

_Mortain protect him._

The thought came instinctively, but Clarke was too exhausted by the stress of the night to muster up any guilt at praying to her god for the man she was supposed to be spying on. Though the fact that what he had just told her about the English matched what she had overheard back at that inn while eavesdropping seemed to indicate that he was not trying to conceal things from her, at least not anymore. Her mind spun at that realization, and her drive to continue considering him a possible enemy dwindled—not that it had really ever been all that strong, if she was honest with herself.

Her thoughts continued to churn in that same manner as they walked the rest of the way to the Duchess’s chambers, and only the soft knock that Bellamy produced against the door was able to chase away her confusion.

Though the door opened with a quiet creak, the next sound was anything but soft. A girl’s excited scream echoed in the deserted hallway, and a blur of brown hair and purple fabric enveloped Bellamy in a desperately tight hug.

“Hi, O,” he laughed into her shoulder, his arms wrapping her up just as securely as she held him.

Clarke watched them bask in each other’s presence, intense affection and utter devotion radiating so strongly from both of them. Her throat closed up at the sight, one so foreign in her world. She loved her convent sisters, possibly as much as these blood siblings loved each other, but for all of her intense experiences with them, they lacked the years of shared secrets and history that these two must have in spades.

“You were gone three days too long,” Octavia griped as she bounced away, though the joy in her eyes belied her disgruntled tone.

“I ran into some—difficulties,” he said carefully, sliding a glance at Clarke.

She wrinkled her nose at him in protest, objecting to being called difficult. Not untrue, but it was also not the reason he was late getting back to his sister. That lay squarely on his own shoulders.

The openness in Octavia’s face disappeared the minute she noticed Clarke, and she straightened her spine, her mouth curving into a polite smile. This was the Duchess, Clarke supposed, at least as she existed in her official capacity. Her physical appearance, beautiful as it was, didn’t alter a bit, but the subdued nature didn’t suit her. The Octavia she had been moments ago with her brother was wilder, freer. Without a doubt, Clarke could picture that girl among her peers at the convent, training to fight and ride and kill, an image that slowly set Clarke at ease around someone of such noble birth.

“O, I want you to meet Clarke. She’s here to help us.”

Octavia shot a questioning look at her brother. “I don’t need any more ladies-in-waiting. Besides, Diana is going to have a fit that you didn’t ask her approval before—”

“She’s not a lady, at least not like that. She’s from the convent of Saint Mortain.”

And with those words, suddenly the Duchess was Octavia again, a wide smile splitting across her face, her eyes dancing with intrigue.

“Truly?” She asked, breathless as she glanced between the two of them.

Bellamy chuckled, running a hand through his hair, setting the previously tamed curls free once more. Clarke just nodded, dropping into a deep curtsy, but was jerked up by Octavia’s firm hands.

“None of that. It is bad enough that my ladies are forced to obey such absurd practices what with Diana’s rules, the stubborn cow. But she is not around and I want to hear all the best ways to kill a man. Seems I might be needing use of such information,” Octavia babbled.

Clarke laughed at her excitement, but she didn’t miss the way Bellamy tensed at her last words. Though said in jest, they probably rang too close to the truth for his liking. Or her own, she realized as she followed the skipping duchess into her chambers with a heart equal parts light and heavy.

Despite her gaiety, Octavia had apparently been quite serious about wanting to know about how to make a kill, and though Clarke was more than inclined to satisfy her curiosity, the slight shake of the head Bellamy had sent her way held back her more detailed answers. She recounted some vague stories and glossed over her own experiences, and Octavia grinned fiercely as she soaked up the information. Still, the knowing look in her eye, which turned exasperated when her gaze landed on her brother, told Clarke that the duchess was not unaware of how protective her brother was. No doubt she would be finding a time to talk with her when Bellamy was absent, to get a fuller picture of what a life with the convent truly entailed.

“Let her breathe, O,” Bellamy chided fondly as Octavia started to launch yet another set of rambling questions at Clarke.

“Don’t interrupt. Diana says its rude,” O sniffed.

“Oh, so  _now_  you listen to your governess’s advice?”

“Only when it suits me, of course.”

Bellamy snorted, waving his hand with exaggerated motion as he mockingly encouraged her to continue.

“So, as I was saying, how do you know who to kill?” Octavia asked. “I mean, does Mortain speak to you directly? Does the convent tell you? But then how would they know who He wants killed?”

“Yes, do tell,” Bellamy drawled, straightening from his slumped position in a nearby chair, suddenly more interested in their conversation. “How do you know you’re not killing an innocent man?”

Clarke bit back a string of swears, because the smirk lingering at the corners of his mouth told her he had been hoping a situation like this would occur. While she certainly owed him no answers regarding the inner workings of the convent and its members—in fact, she was sure Indra would strictly forbid her from revealing even the slightest bit of information to him—she did owe her duchess that courtesy.

“As one of our most closely guarded secrets,” she said, shooting a dark look at Bellamy before turning back to Octavia, “I would be more than happy to share that with you, but with you alone.”

“You can trust Bell.”

“I myself am inclined to agree,” Clarke admitted, the words not even a lie. Her resistance came more from not wanting him to win this particular battle, so she thought quickly, grasping for a reason to exclude him from the conversation. “But I’m not sure my abbess would. The safety of my peers, my—sisters, is of utmost importance to her, and even the slightest slip of information could mean death for any one of them.”

Octavia nodded in understanding, her mouth pursing in concentration before she blurted, “Leave, Bell?”

“No.”

“Please?”

He scowled at Clarke as he shook his head in repeated denial. She just shrugged in feigned innocence, not feeling at all remorseful for using his own sister against him. If he wanted to play dirty, she was more than happy to oblige.

“Bell,” Octavia pleaded once more.

“I’m not leaving you alone with a trained assassin.”

“You introduced me to said assassin, so if she happens to kill me during her stay here, that’s on you.”

“Now I know why Anya leaves every Privy Council meeting with a headache. You’re impossible.”

“Impossible not to love.”

Bellamy tried to disguise his laugh by turning it into a frustrated growl, but Clarke wasn’t fooled. Neither was Octavia, apparently, if the satisfied grin on her face was any indication.

“Thank you,” she sang out as he finally rose from his seat and shuffled reluctantly towards the door.

“I’m leaving this cracked open as a precaution, no arguments,” he said shortly, lingering in the doorway.

With a roll of her eyes, Octavia waved him off, and once he had disappeared, she turned her attention back to Clarke, enthusiasm rolling off of her in waves.

In as much detail as she could manage without giving too much away, Clarke quietly told Octavia of the marques, how they were indicators of the method of death to be used on the target as well as visual, symbolic confirmation of their bearer’s fate as dictated by the god.

“Saint,” Octavia automatically corrected, though the dryness in her voice hinted to Clarke that her adherence to the Church’s terminology for the Old Nine was merely political, one of the ‘etiquettes’ she had so clearly delineated as unnecessary earlier in their meeting.

“So all of you can see the marques?” She continued.

“Any handmaiden of Mortain, if she has received his Tears, which our Seeress is in charge of making and bestowing upon a novitiate’s promotion to full sister, can see the marques, yes.” Clarke hesitated slightly before adding more, unable to resist the duchess’s earnest interest. “There are few, like me, however, who have been able to see them since birth. I never knew what they meant, and I saw them all the time, helping my mother with her patients, but I never told anyone. I—no one would have believed me.”

“Not even your mother?”

That simple question stirred up all kinds of emotions in Clarke’s chest, which ached at the memories of lavender scent and a lilting voice she always associated with her mother. In her early time at the convent, she had asked herself Octavia’s question over and over, especially after discovering her true parentage. Had her mother been waiting all her life for her to shows signs of being god born? And if she had said something, would her mother have told her the truth?

Swallowing thickly, Clarke gave Octavia a shaky grin, no more ready to address those questions than she had been four years ago, and certainly not in front of someone as unfamiliar as the duchess, despite her kind, engaging nature.

“She passed before I had the chance,” Clarke fibbed slightly, though the grief in her voice was honest.

“I’m sorry,” Octavia mumbled, wincing. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s alright.” Clarke reached out and clasped the duchess’s wrist, trying to reassure her. “Really, I don’t mind.”

After a few quiet moments, Bellamy called out from the hallway. “Octavia, it’s getting late. Say goodnight.”

This time the duchess listened to her brother, standing and pulling Clarke into a tight hug.

“Thank you, and I hope we have the chance to talk again soon. Maybe I’ll even get to see you in action.”

Clarke thought it was more likely that she would go to bed with Count Forestier than have a chance to show Octavia firsthand what the handmaidens of Mortain were capable of, if Bellamy’s behavior tonight was any clue. Still, she nodded obligingly in farewell.

When she exited the room, she found Bellamy slumped against the far wall, staring at his boots. He wouldn’t look at her, and her stomach sank as she realized why.

“You were listening,” she stated, trying to keep her tone neutral. “That’s why you told Octavia to say goodnight.”

“She forgets sometimes that she’s a duchess, and that people feel obligated to answer to her.” He paused, scuffing his foot against the flagstones. “You shouldn’t have to answer those types of questions, about your family, about—before. The convent, your mission, she is entitled to know about that. The rest is your business, nobody else’s.”

Her cheeks flamed when Bellamy finally looked up at her, his eyes full of understanding and empathy. She supposed he and his sister had faced their share of inappropriate questions after arriving at the castle, and she couldn’t imagine, for someone as protective as he or as blunt as Octavia, how hard it must have been to bear the scrutiny of the entire court.

Breathing deeply, she realized there was only one thing to say. “Thank you.”

He stilled as the intensity of her two words blanketed the both of them, and the moment stretched, suspended as they breathed in time with one another, coming to terms with their shared experience.  

“It’s late,” she finally said and began walking down the hall.

She heard him push off from the wall, his muted steps falling into pace with her own.

They walked in silence back to her chambers, though he did wish her a quiet  _goodnight_ before leaving for his own room.

It wasn’t until she was almost asleep that she realized he hadn’t offered her his arm this time, and she slipped into oblivion with a smile on her face, satisfied that they were finally getting somewhere.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For her mission to succeed, Clarke knows she needs to gain Bellamy’s trust, even as he fights her at every turn. Still, she never expected it to go both ways, yet she finds herself confiding in him, at first by accident, and then because she just might want to.

After gripping the stone ledge tighter, Clarke dared to edge another few inches out of the tower. As she strained to hear the conversation echoing out the window of the next room over, she glanced down at the courtyard below. If anyone saw her, it should look like she was simply basking in the sunlight and fresh air. She was too high up for anyone to notice the frustration etched into the lines of her face as she eavesdropped on Bellamy and his guest.

The night of the ball had seemed like one small step forward with him, but within the week since then, he had already taken some large ones back. Yet again Bellamy had left her behind for the day, and his little habit of excluding her from everything important was grating on her. She was angry enough that he had questioned their attacker without consulting her, then eliminated him without letting her have a shot. Today, he had conveniently forgotten to mention he was meeting with a contact of Wick’s, who had approached him early this morning in the stables. Clarke had observed the exchange from around the corner, after accidentally stumbling upon them while checking to see if her trunk had arrived. When he had seen her later at breakfast, he hadn’t said a word, and so Clarke had determined to follow him when he left to meet his contact. The convent was counting on her. She needed something to report, and soon, which was why she was leaning out the window and listening in on their conversation now, hoping for at least a little bit of helpful intel to pass along.

“And why should I bother to meet with your liege lord, not knowing his identity or the terms of his marriage proposal?” Bellamy asked, his voice cold and calculating.

Even in his worst moments with her, he had never sounded so detached. The deadness in his tone made her skin crawl, because he seemed like a different person, an empty soul wearing the same face she knew so well by now. Though the thought didn’t sit comfortably with her, she supposed he might  _have_  to become someone else, in order to survive the vipers that lurked within the castle walls, and beyond too.

“My lord is keenly aware of the political fiasco that is arranging the Duchess’s marriage at the moment,” the guest stated, sounding calm despite the venom Bellamy was throwing at him. 

“He wishes to not cause more trouble for you—he believes that if the two of you, with the Duchess’s input, can come to an agreement and then present it to the Council, his offer has a better shot of succeeding. And besides, it is common knowledge that the last two Breton nobles to come forward publicly with betrothal proposals now reside in the realm of Mortain.”

Though Bellamy didn’t react, clearly unperturbed by the stark statement, Clarke sucked in a surprised breath. She hadn’t realized their enemy was so actively trying to discourage a successful marriage for Octavia. However, she wouldn’t put it past Emerson or certainly Tristan to arrange such assassinations, now that she had met them.

“You may pick the time and place, if that advantage will help you make your decision,” the man added.

“Why now?” Bellamy said slowly, and Clarke could easily picture the deep furrow in his brow, the way his eyes would darken as he tried to rapidly puzzle out his companion’s motivations.

“Because there are whispers that Count Forestier will be making his move soon, and my liege knows too much of that man to let such a thing happen.”

A heavy silence fell over the room, and Clarke shifted uneasily on the stone ledge. The slight movement of her feet sent a few crumbled pieces of stone tumbling down to the yard below, and she swallowed thickly, praying to Mortain that Bellamy would make his answer soon. She did not mind heights, but the sooner she was back inside, the better.

“Alright,” he finally sighed. “I will meet with your lord. Do you know of the—”

The sound of the latch lifting on the door across the room startled Clarke, and she scrambled off of the window ledge, spinning around just in time to see Madame Aurora walking inside.

“Oh, Demoiselle Clarke,” she exclaimed, thick eyebrows rising in surprise and even a little bit of suspicion.

Rolling her shoulders slightly, Clarke settled herself into her role, forcing her lips to curve up into a sheepish smile.

“I was looking for my cousin,” she lied, ducking her head as if embarrassed for getting lost.

There was a slight pause, and she looked up through her eyelashes to see Aurora considering her carefully. Then the woman snorted, sweeping over to sit regally in the chair to Clarke’s left.

“My dear, no one believes that demure pretense, least of all you. So there is no need to put on your pretty act here. Now sit, and tell me how you managed to capture my son’s stubborn heart.”

Clarke’s pulse stuttered as she sank down into the chair across from Aurora, because for a second she thought Bellamy’s mother had discovered her true identity. She whipped up a weak smile to hide her relief that the woman merely wanted to use her son’s supposed mistress as a source of information about him. This was a game she could play, and one she often had practiced thoroughly during her training. Though Aurora’s bluntness, which Octavia had clearly inherited, added a raw, new angle that could prove to be unsettling, if she wasn’t wary of it.

“I told Bellamy that it wouldn’t do us any good to try and hide it,” she complained, letting a little of her true feelings seep in to the otherwise feigned statement.

“My son likes his privacy.”

_For good reason_ , she thought in indignation, but just nodded her head accommodatingly instead.

“Perhaps that is why your presence is such a surprise to me—bringing you here puts him in the spotlight at a time when he can least afford it. And all for a no-name girl from the backwoods of Brittany, no less.”

A biting retort rose at the tip of Clarke’s tongue at the insult, but the undertone of concern that laced Aurora’s acerbic words had her swallowing it back down. The shadow of ferocity and fear in the woman’s eyes confirmed her guess, that as detached as from her children as she seemed, she cared for them, deeply, and sought to eliminate a threat when she saw one.

“I think it is a surprise to him, as well,” Clarke responded softly instead, hoping she had feigned sincerity well enough to convince Aurora.

There was still caution in her eyes as she considered Clarke once more, but the defensiveness had waned.

“So, you met Bellamy on the road?”

And so began an onslaught of questions, and Clarke felt as if she were dodging arrows, they came so fast and skillfully launched. Still, she managed to skirt around the most probing inquires, assuming that Bellamy would not want her talking to his mother so intimately, not when the two were on such poor terms. The animosity puzzled her, because Aurora said nothing outright disparaging about her son.

She breathed a sigh of relief when a knock sounded at the door. In walked in a middle-aged man with a long, heavily lined face and the slightest streaks of silver in his black hair.

“I didn’t know you would have company today,” he said, glancing from Aurora to Clarke.

“It’s alright, Marcus. She’s—family.” Aurora’s mouth twisted up wryly at the last word.

The man shot her the briefest questioning look before turning his attention to Clarke. His eyes widened when he finally focused on her, almost in recognition. She knew they had never met before, so it was unnerving to have him look at her in such a way.

“This is Demoiselle Clarke. She is staying with Bellamy for the season. And this is Lord Marcus Kane, brother to the former Duke.”

Aurora’s words seemed to bring Kane back, and he smiled warmly in greeting, offering the usual pleasantries as he sat down across from her.

“I can come back later. I don’t want to disturb you two.”

“Just get out the board,” Aurora ordered with a scoff, edging forward on her chair. “Unless you are finally tired of losing.”

Kane chuckled, setting up a game of chess. “Do you play, Clarke?”

“A little.”

“If you want to see a master at work, you should watch closely,” he replied nodding first at Aurora and then the empty space at his side. “Pull up a chair, if you would like. Chess is a useful game to know how to play.”

Clarke snorted quietly, because he sounded like Indra. The abbess had always insisted the girls learn, but she and Raven never had the patience for it. They would sneak off and practice their archery or knife-throwing instead. Maya, however, thrived on the game, eagerly crushing whomever she could rope into playing with her.

A pang of homesickness ran through Clarke as she scooted her chair towards Kane. She missed Maya dearly, and who knows how she would manage to see Raven in the castle without blowing either of their covers, if she even got the chance at all.

Either it was nostalgia or the skill of the players, but surprisingly, Clarke found herself highly engaged by the game. Aurora favored the offensive, while Kane played a long game of defense. They were almost perfectly matched, though even she could see that Aurora always had the slightest bit of lead on her opponent.

In between moves, Kane kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. His knee was only inches from hers, as the table with the game board was small, requiring her to be almost on top of the two players to see. His proximity made her nervous, and she started bouncing her leg furiously as the game grew more intense, and Kane’s stares grew more direct.

As they got down to the last few moves, the friendly but fierce tension in the room peaked, so when the door whooshed open, they all startled, the loud interruption shattering the contemplative silence.

“Clarke.”

She didn’t know how he had found her, but regardless, Bellamy was striding towards her, frowning. Displeasure rolled off of him in waves, his jaw ticking in annoyance.

A mixture of satisfaction and guilt swirled in her gut at his agitation. “Yes?”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Well, you found me.”

She watched his nostrils flare, clearly not pleased with her flippant responses. His eyes flickered back and forth between her and Aurora, and then to Kane, and his expression soured.

“What did you need?” Clarke continued, hoping without much confidence that the other two hadn’t noticed his shift in demeanor. The way Aurora stiffened and Kane straightened in his seat, however, indicated that her companions were just as observant as she was.

“You.”

The barely veiled heat in that one word had her flushing, and for all the wrong reasons. She should be embarrassed, or annoyed, but the way he was looking at her—as if they really were lovers, and he  _needed_  her—just made her feel wanted. She breathed deeply, trying to shake the disconcerting feeling off, because it was just pretend.

_Just pretend_ , she repeated in her mind, gripping one of her wrists tightly so that she could feel the blade hidden there.

After gathering her thoughts, she then gathered her skirts and stood, sauntering over to Bellamy.

“Then I’m ready to go,” she replied, laying a gentle hand on his upper arm, letting her fingers drum against the firm muscle repeatedly, teasingly. “If you  _need_  me.”

He reached up and caught her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. The grip was loose, though, strangely hesitant for him. Still, when he leaned down and hissed in her ear  _I really do_ , his tone was as commanding and disapproving as ever, and Clarke struggled not to grimace and ruin the intimate picture they were making.

She tried not to think of what his mother must be feeling, seeing them like this. She couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Aurora when she wished her farewell.

“Thank you for the enlightening afternoon,” she said to Kane, whose gaze had narrowed in on her nearness to Bellamy.

“Anytime, Clarke,” he began to say, but Bellamy stepped between the two of them, cutting Kane off.

Before she knew it, she had been herded out the door. Bellamy’s grip on her hand was no longer gentle, instead demanding and almost painful as he towed her down the hall. With a sound of disgust, she wiggled her hand away, though she continued to pace after him.

“You’re better than I give you credit for,” he ground out, practically running down the castle hall at this point. “Cozying up to my mother and Kane in one afternoon—quite a feat, even for a novice like you.”

“You’re such an ass,” Clarke spat back. “Your mother was the one who approached me, and she was doing all the fishing.”

He opened his mouth, fury creeping into his expression, but she cut him off.

“I didn’t spill any of your secrets, if that’s what you want to know.”

“You do know who Kane is, don’t you?”

“The late Duke’s brother.”

“And the man who would’ve been next in line to the throne, if not for my sister. Funny, how you manage to sidle up to one of the greatest threats to my sister’s rule only a week after promising her your loyalty.”

“We were playing chess!”

“Awful closely.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Are you guilty?”

Clarke let out a strangled sound. “Kane was visiting your mother, and I saw no reason to leave. Especially when I had nothing better to do.”

The annoyed look Bellamy gave her showed that he hadn’t missed the implication in her words. “I’m not your keeper.”

“But we are in this together. Or at least I thought we were, but you keep shutting me out.”

That had him stopping in his tracks, and Clarke didn’t know if it was the words themselves or the pleading note of her voice that she hadn’t meant to let creep in. She held her breath, waiting for his reaction, but he just sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“I am here to help,” she insisted, a bit more steadily this time, moving closer to him. “We both want the same thing: to protect Brittany, and Octavia.”

A vague thought about how Indra might disagree with that statement flittered through her mind, but it disappeared as soon as Bellamy turned around, exhaustion and apology written into every shadow of his face. With a quick glance around, he pulled her into a hidden alcove, out of earshot of passersby.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just—it’s been only me and O for a while now, and I don’t know how to—”

“Not be so controlling? Secretive? Paranoid?” Clarke offered, a teasing grin slipping onto her face.

Bellamy scowled at her, but his eyes remained soft. “I’m trying,” he said gruffly.

“Try harder,” she replied cheekily, echoing his own past words back to him.

It took him a second, but then he ducked his head, trying to hide an exasperated grin.

“So you want to help?” He said after his expression had settled back into seriousness.

“Yes.”

“Then get ready to go on a ride.”

Clarke nearly rolled her eyes at his veiled invitation—they clearly still needed to work on his transparency—and because she wanted him on just as uneven footing as she felt she was, she immediately responded, “To meet the mysterious lord who is wanting to be Octavia’s newest suitor?”

His eyebrows shot up in indignant surprise, and she nearly laughed at how shocked he was.

“Like I said, I find ways to occupy myself if I don’t have anything better to do.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

Then his eyes flicked downward, like an unconscious reflex, scanning her from head to toe, and she realized how closely they were standing. She could feel the cold stone just inches away from her back, a strong contrast to the heat radiating from Bellamy, who was leaning into her from less than a foot away.

As if coming to the same conclusion, he stepped back. “Meet me in the stables before lunch tomorrow. We’re riding out to the chapel near Mt. Weather to meet our contact.”

Clarke nodded and then watched him leave, his shoulders growing stiffer with every step he took away from her.

* * *

It was a few minutes before she stepped out of the alcove to head back to her room. When she arrived, and saw the door to her room cracked open, she tensed, immediately reaching for her concealed blades. Palming one, she readied herself and then pushed open the door to reveal the intruder.

A loud squawk startled her, and her eyes went straight to the large raven in the cage under her window. With a relieved sigh, she realized her things from the convent must have arrived, but when the ruffle of fabric sounded from her left, adrenaline rushed through her once more. Without thinking, she flung her knife in that direction.

“I was right not to underestimate your skills,” Chancellor Wallace said, turning to look at the blade wedged into the grout of the stone wall, only a hair’s breath from his ear. “And I suppose it’s my own fault for lingering uninvited into an assassin’s bedroom.”

“It was my mistake,” Clarke apologized, trying to hide her irritation. Bellamy would have lost it had she accidentally knifed the Chancellor, not to mention Indra’s fury, but could they really blame her for being taken by surprise?

Wallace just smiled, yanking the blade from the wall and offering it back to her. “I was just dropping off your belongings the abbess sent with me. I figured you would want them sooner rather than later.”

“Thank you.”

Despite the clear dismissal in her tone, Wallace lingered, pacing slowly over to the other side of the room, gazing out the window lazily.

“How are you finding court?”

Clarke bit back a sigh, recognizing one of the abbess’s tests. No doubt Wallace was going to report back on her progress to Indra, as a secondary source of information to either confirm or repudiate what she would send herself.

“Dull. Dangerous. Decadent.”

The chancellor chuckled at her flippant response, and she tapped her fingertip on the blade resting against her palm, eager for him to get on with it.

“And Blake? Have you made progress with him?”

“He trusts me now.” The words came automatically, and as soon as they passed her lips, she wished they hadn’t, because they were true, or at least she believed they were, and the way Wallace’s eyes lit up at that information made her stomach clench with apprehension. No doubt he was already spinning out a dozen plots to use that information to their advantage. It made her nauseous to think of taking advantage of Bellamy’s hard-earned loyalty.

“You are truly exceptional. That is no small feat. Blake is as guarded as they come.” A frown crossed his face, and his fiddled with the ring on his hand. “Are you certain he is not fooling you into complacency?”

“Can one be certain of anything at court?”

Wallace didn’t laugh at her response this time, just sent her an chiding look. Tense silence descended, and Clarke grew more agitated, her desire for him to depart strengthening by the second.

“Watch him—he is a tricky one. And Aurora too—I find it odd that she, the mother of the duchess, is so very close with one of Octavia’s greatest rivals.”  

“Bellamy is in agreement with that fact,” she confirmed.

“And yet he does nothing about it.”

“Maybe there is nothing to be done.”

Wallace shot her a skeptical look, and she raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to reveal more information, if he had it.  

“The abbess asked you send her an update immediately,” he finally said, heading for the door. “She is anxious to settle this matter.”

“As am I. And thank you, again, for seeing to my things.”

“I’m here to help you, Clarke, anytime you need it.”

With a last nod farewell, Chancellor Wallace slipped out of her room, the sound of the door latch clicking shut behind him easing her nerves enormously. It unsettled her, interacting with someone so closely connected to the convent again after so much time removed from it, an stark reminder of where her true loyalties should lie.

The raven squawked again, reminding her that she now had supplies to aid her mission. Grinning, she threw herself down in front of the trunk and opened it. Filled to the brim, it contained gowns of all colors and styles, along with belts and headdresses and jewelry, each with a hidden agenda that would serve her in more nefarious ways than mere decoration. She only let herself gush over the adornments for a few minutes before she dug for the bottom of the trunk, sliding her fingertips along the edges. When they finally found the soft spot, she pressed down, releasing the locking mechanism that allowed her to lift up the panel and access the hidden supplies below.

First, she sorted through the weapons the convent had provided her with: more knives, a set of throwing stars, another garrote, a small crossbow that could be concealed in the folds of her skirt. Her throat closed up when she realized Maya must have packed her things, because the choices were completely perfect, everything weighted and sized to her advantage. Blinking back tears, she turned her attention to the rows of tiny glass bottles, calm washing over her at the clinking sounds they made when she brushed her fingertips over them.

When she touched them again, however, she realized the sound was oddly hollow, and louder than she would have expected. She plucked a few of the bottles up, realizing that some were empty. Confused, she searched the trunk until she discovered a letter tucked in the back. The note, scrawled in Indra’s authoritative, messy script, told her that while the convent provided her with the rarer poisons, it would be easier for her to whip up some of the simpler ones on site. The name of a shop and an address was scribbled below, her source of ingredients for such tasks. Clarke sighed, because sneaking out from under Bellamy’s watch to go into town to retrieve the necessary supplies would not be easy, but she was certain the abbess would not want their contact revealed to someone whom the convent still considered suspect.

Figuring now was a good a time as any, she repacked the trunk, locked it, and then, after quickly scribbling down a list of needed supplies, retrieved her cloak, setting off for town to see what Green & Jordan had in their stocks.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the store was tucked away in a shadowy, dead-end alley whose turn-off she had almost missed, as narrow as it was. Yet another secret of the convent’s, hidden barely out of plain sight, just like everything, and everyone, else connected to those who served Mortain.

As Clarke approached, she almost turned around, because the grimy windows were dark and vacant. Then a flicker of candlelight caught her eye, signaling someone was within. So, she pushed open the front door, a waft of fragrant, warm air rushing past her as she stepped inside. The rich, earthy smell overwhelmed her, bringing back long-buried memories of her mother’s workroom in their old house, where the two of them had spent countless hours brewing tisanes, cutting bandages, making balms, and assembling poultices. As she walked further in, she furiously blinked away the tears that were forming, trying to push away her melancholy and longing for something she could never get back.

When her vision cleared again, Clarke noticed that in contrast to the outside of the store, the interior was surprisingly tidy. The shelves clean and organized, and the floor smooth and uncluttered. Bottles and pots and barrels lined practically every surface in the store, arranged in logical order but still crowding one another to such a degree that she guessed a room twice this size still wouldn’t be large enough to comfortably fit all that was on display.

Muffled scrapes sounded from the back of the store, and she could just make out the low hum of two voices. The distinctness of their words was lost amongst the rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling wheeled shelves separating her from whoever was talking. As she moved closer, wandering amongst the stacks, the voices grew louder, and more comprehensible.

“—one thing, Jasper. I ask you to do one thing—”

“I put them away, just like you asked!”

“There’s a difference between putting something away so it is properly unpacked, aliquoted, and alphabetized, and just chucking packages into some random corner of the room so that we have to dig through an entire month’s worth of deliveries anytime we need something.”

“Well,  _excuse_  me, we can’t all be neurotic geniuses like  _some_  people.”

The voices rose sharply, and from around the corner came two young men, definitely younger than Clarke would have expected to own a shop at all, let alone one dedicated to aiding those who served the gods. The shorter one had black hair and a friendly face, though his eyes widened in surprise upon seeing her. The taller boy looked even more dumbfounded, gulping loudly as he brushed shaggy brown bangs out of his eyes.

Clarke bit back a laugh before saying, “I’m wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for some supplies?”

“Yes. Yes, of course!” The shorter one blurted out, stumbling over his words. “I’m Monty, one of the co-owners. And this is Jasper.”

“Hey,” the other one—Jasper, apparently—stuttered out, giving her a goofy, almost adoring smile along with a casual nod.

“So what can we help you with?”

“Just a few things I need for my work,” she said lightly, pulling out her supply list and handing it to Monty.

The boy strode over to the desk while unfolding the paper, his partner following close behind, and they jostled each other as they both greedily read her writing. It was a funny sight, Jasper trying to grasp at the parchment, which Monty nimbly kept out of his reach while still managing to never take his eyes off of it. Finally when he got to the end of the list, Clarke noticed his sharp intake of breath and the way his face tensed in understanding. Jasper wasn’t far behind in realizing all of what she was asking for—and thus, who she truly was—though his reaction was far less subtle, as his eyes looked like they were going to pop right out of his head.

With careful movements, Monty folded the list back up and caught her eye, his gaze cautious and considering. Jasper started to speak, but his partner cut him off with an elbow jab to the stomach. Then Monty raised his eyebrows, expectantly, pointedly.

Clarke cleared her throat, biting the inside of her cheek in impressed amusement. They were young, yes, but clearly well trained in how to ensure that only those who were truly devoted to the old gods could ask of them what she had. So, with a steady voice, she began to recite the Blessing of the Nine, and with each word she spoke, she could see Monty and Jasper practically melting with relief:

_In peace and wisdom granted by Camulos and Brigantia, may you leave Mer’s shore. With the love of Arduinna, Amourna, and Dea Matrona, may you find the next. Blessed be Cissonius for granting you safe passage on your travels, else pray that Salonius is merciful and does not lead you too far astray. And, either in this realm or that of Mortain, may we meet again._

“You passed,” Monty cheered quietly when she finished. “And I don’t suppose I have to even ask which of the gods you serve, if your list is any indication.”

“Is there anything on here that  _can’t_  kill someone?” Jasper guffawed, his shrill laugh halfway between awed and terrified.

Clarke threw the two boys a wry smile, then shrugged. “I don’t know—would you like to be my test subject?”

Jasper gulped again, and Monty snickered under his breath before suggesting to his partner, “Since you clearly have your own filing system, how about  _you_  go find what she needs in the back?”

Snatching the list out of his hands with a disgruntled sigh, Jasper skulked away towards the shelves, grumbling all the while. A few minutes passed, with Clarke and Monty exchanging awkward smiles, until a loud crash and a shriek sounded from far back in the store. With a pained, apologetic look, Monty dashed away, presumably to unearth Jasper from whatever he was probably now buried under. While she hoped he was okay, the image made Clarke smile as she absently examined the cluttered desk and the wall covered in notes and scraps of paper behind it. There were reminders and lists from customers, small doodles and even a few jokes, all innocuous.

Then her breath caught, nearly choking her, when her eyes fell on a piece of parchment, crinkled and covered in hasty, smudged scribbles, that had a small, dark bird sketched into the bottom corner, like a signature.

_Raven. Raven had been here._

She knew without a doubt her friend had also come to Green & Jordan for supplies—odd, considering weapons had always been more Raven’s style. She always said she liked the directness of them, that seeing her target die before her very eyes made it easier for her to sleep at night, certain that the job was finished. So for her to be buying poison told Clarke that her mission, whatever it was, was so delicate that direct force was not an option.

_She must be going out of her mind_   _with impatience._

Before she could dwell on the discovery any longer, the boys were returning, their arms full of tiny bottles and corked vials. Jasper almost tripped on his way over, causing Monty to scowl and sigh heavily. They managed to package up her items without any accidents, however, and Monty handed the bundle off to her with a shy but cheery smile.

“It was nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Clarke replied. “And I will probably be back at some point, just for the record.”

Jasper looked ill at the thought, clearly thinking of the high number of bodies she could produce with what they had given her today only and why in the world she would need more. She winked at him, and he swallowed, loudly.

“May we meet again,” Monty offered solemnly, those his eyes twinkled in amusement at his partner’s nervousness.

Clarke nodded, giving them one last smile. “May we meet again.”

* * *

_A piercing scream rang in her ears, and her very bones cracked with a chilling pain as she recognized the voice._

Mother! Mother!  _She yelled back, flying down the endless maze of hallways, each door she passed locked up tight, no matter how hard she tugged on the handles._

_And still her mother screamed, long and loud and pleading, and soon enough Clarke could barely see, her vision too blurry from the tears welling up at the devastating sound of her mother in pain. Fury warred with terror in her gut as she searched and searched for her._

She had to find her, she had to find her, she had to find her.

_Finally, after stumbling down what seemed like another infinity of hallways, she saw an end to one of the passagse. As if the hounds of Mortain were at her heels, she sprinted for the door, letting out a weak cry of relief when she saw that it was cracked open, just a sliver._

_When she pushed open the door, however, all sound stopped, and she could hear nothing, not even the buzz of silence. Pressure stuffed itself inside her ears, a painful force that built and built and built until her eyes landed on the unmoving body on the floor, and then it exploded in a despairing scream of her own._

_Sinking down to her knees, she reached out with trembling hands to try to stop the flow of blood coming from her mother’s body, but to no avail. Sticky and smelling of iron, it soaked into her dress, the lines of her palms, the cracks in her lips as she leaned down to kiss her mother’s cold forehead, one of her hands still uselessly compressing the wound, the other resting loosely on the hilt of the knife that had so unkindly taken her mother’s life._

_Then a hand gripped her shoulder, and searing rage filled her, a black emotionless void that had her burning from the inside out—_ kill, maim, slice, rip, tear, make him  **bleed bleed bleed _,_** _the monstrous abyss filling her seemed to whisper blackly, gleefully._

_So with a feral, shrieking growl, she seized the dagger and whipped around, raising it to slash at his throat—_

“Clarke, Clarke! Stop!”

Her entire body seized with awareness as her wet eyes flew open, her flushed skin soaked in a cold sweat and her throat beyond raw. A heavy weight held her down, and she struggled to breath, both the physical pressure and the stifling grief leftover from her dream holding her lungs hostage. With a choking cry, she fought against the hands that were clutching her wrists, trying to get a clear view through the shadows as to who her attacker was.

And then suddenly, she was weightless, buoyant, no longer held down. Scrambling to sit up, she heard the sound of ripping fabric, only realizing too late that she had torn a hole in her sheets when she had brought her hand down to the mattress, because she she was clutching the knife—the one she kept under her pillow for safety—in her shaking hand. As she stared at the blade, a shining slice of silver that stood out starkly against the glowing white of her sheets, she registered another color: red, rusty red.

_Blood_ , she thought dazedly.  _It’s blood._

As the last traces of sleepy confusion drained from her, she jerked her head up to look to the foot of her bed, her gaze landing on a pair of worried eyes set deeply into a shadowed face. Slowly, the features emerged from the dark of her bedroom to reveal Bellamy, expression twisted with concern and a little bit of pain, his chest heaving with exertion and a hand pressed to the side of his neck.

_Blood. It’s his blood._

With a gasp, she let the knife clatter to the floor and crawled towards him, hands reaching immediately for the wound she had mistakenly inflicted.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, fear and frustration gripping her chest tightly as she probed the long, bloody but, thank the gods, shallow cut that marred his dark skin. “I was—I didn’t realize what it was doing, that it was you.”

“So it wasn’t personal. Good to know,” Bellamy quipped, though the shaky tenor of his voice belied his nonchalant words. She had scared him, and her stomach clenched as she realized she could very well have killed him.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, continuing to say it over and over again, focusing on the cut and not the piercing stare she could feel him directing her way. Pointedly avoiding his gaze, she ripped a piece of her thin nightgown off, dabbing gently but furiously at the wound, willing with all the strength she had for it to stop bleeding. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He sucked in a pained breath when she pressed down too hard on her next stroke. When she muttered yet another apology, his hand immediately reached up to grab her wrist. She swallowed thickly as his firm grip stilled her quivering hand, his thumb rubbing over her pulse point soothingly.

“Clarke,” he said slowly. “It’s alright.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, still avoiding his gaze and trying to hold back the tears simultaneously.

“It’s  _alright._ ”

The way his hoarse voice broke over the last word shattered her composure, and a rasping sob escaped her. It had been so long since she had had that dream, but the gap had done nothing to dull the agony that throbbed through her, a pulse of pain and mournful yearning. She  _missed_  her mother, the way she smelled of pine and animal fat, her throaty laugh, even the disapproving, hard glint of her eyes when Clarke did something particularly risky with a patient.

The longing grief writhing under her heated skin suddenly twisted, as it always did, becoming a sharp, barbed thing, raking at her insides angrily until she too was angry, burning, vengeful.

_Blood must have blood._

Her eyes flicked open, and she expected to see everything in shades of red, as she did every time this haunting memory crept into her sleeping mind.

Instead, she saw brown. Brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin.

“Clarke,” Bellamy whispered softly, sorrowfully.

She flinched when his hands rose up from his sides. He paused at her hesitation, but when she didn’t move any further back, he blinked reassuringly at her—another flash of brown, not red,  _brown brown brown_ —and slowly reached for her.

When his cool, rough palms finally cupped her jaw, her throat tightened at the chill that ran through her, radiating out from where his skin touched hers. She fought the urge to pull away, to give into the hot, greedy void still sucking at her insides, but everything in her—her pulse, her breath, the very marrow of her bones—stilled when his thumbs brushed against her wet cheeks, wiping away her tears.

Clarke dropped her head, letting it rest in his broad hands as she tried to regain control of her swirling thoughts. Memories of her father and her mother, of Indra, of Raven and Maya, of Shumway’s convulsing body, Octavia’s lilting voice, and Bellamy’s piercing eyes twisted together, a tangle of threads that stitched her past and present together, pulling her heart in opposite directions until she felt as if the muscle itself would tear in two.

Without a word, Bellamy pulled her into him, enveloping her in a tight embrace. She clutched at the front of his nightshirt with weak fingers and pressed her mouth into the crook of his neck, his skin hot against her lips. The closer he held her, the limper she fell, for once letting someone else bear the burden of her grief and confusion.

It was only when a soft rustling and a squawk from her raven broke the heady silence that she startled out of her stupor. All at once, the feel of Bellamy’s firm body pressed against hers registered. The warmth from his solid muscles easily seeped through their thin clothing to spiral against her skin, setting her nerves alight with a strange sort of wanting.

The raven watched her, its beady eyes glittering—knowingly, accusingly—in the pitch-black room, and suddenly she tasted iron on her lips.

“You’re bleeding again,” she rasped out flatly, rapidly extricating herself from Bellamy’s arms and looking up at him as she did so. Clarke regretted that decision as soon as her gaze locked with his, telling herself she must have imagined the swell and then immediate fall of emotion in his expression as cold air swept between their now distant bodies.

The racing, uneven beat of her heart spoke another truth, however. A slight panic gripped her as she fumbled for the cloth strip again, unprepared for what she had seen in his eyes. He didn’t say a word, however, just sat motionless as she cleaned him up once more, this time making sure the bleeding stopped for good.

When she finished her ministrations, he straightened, and she lowered herself from her kneeling position, tucking her legs underneath her as she watching him probe lightly at the cut.

“You have good aim,” he said tonelessly.

“The convent trains us well.” She waited a beat, then asked, “Why were you here?”

“We have a pretense to keep up—enthralled lovers, and whatnot.” He picked up a large book that had fallen to the bed and waved it around. “Your room is just as comfortable to read in as mine, and this way we’re more convincing.”

She swallowed, his words registering. She shouldn’t be surprised, because Bellamy was nothing if meticulous when it came to carrying out subterfuge, and then a thought dawned on her.

“You’ve been here before.”

Even in the dark she could see color crawl onto his cheeks, a small but significant sign of his embarrassment. “Just once. The night of the ball. Your debut at my side caused quite a ruckus, and—well, I thought it was best if we nipped any doubts in the bud.”

“Yet you didn’t wake me,” she said, masking her surprise with censure. “You should have.”

“You were tired, and you needed to sleep, not watch me read. You aren’t indestructible Clarke, no matter how thoroughly the convent has convinced you otherwise.”

Clarke didn’t know if she was more disturbed by the fact that she had slept through that visit—a mistake that could have cost her her life in more dangerous circumstances—or that she felt herself flush with warmth at the insistent concern in his voice.

Not knowing what else to say after that, she fell back on what was easy, comfortable. “You should put a bandage on that. I think the bleeding has stopped for good, but covering it will help prevent infection.”

Bellamy nodded distractedly, his eyes unfocused. A handful of silent seconds slipped by before he snapped his gaze back to her face and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

She recoiled reflexively, and he sighed, recognizing that as her answer.

“Goodnight, Clarke,” he whispered before turning on his heel and slipping out the door, leaving her to the darkness of her room and the tempest of her thoughts.

* * *

When Clarke woke the next morning, she blinked blearily in the brilliant sunlight streaming through her windows.

Odd, that she had slept in this late.

As she stretched in bed, drawing up a list of tasks for the day, she absently reached for the knife under her pillow, a habit she had picked up in her early days of training.

Confusion filled her when her fingers met only with the soft fabric of her sheets, the cold hardness of her blade absent. Fumbling at the covers, she searched for the knife frantically.

It was only when her hand caught on a tear in her bed sheet, her eyes narrowing in on the smear of red coating the jagged edges of the ruined material, that the memories of the previous night—her nightmare, Bellamy and his injury, her breakdown—washed over her.

She breathed out a quick prayer to Mortain, pleading for him to send her a sign that she was on the right path soon, for every day she spent here chipped away at her usual certainty of purpose, and she felt as if she was drowning, without a single hope of a lifeline in sight.

Compulsively, Clarke ran her fingers over the bloodstain, unease pooling in her stomach as she wondered, by the end of her time here at court, just how much blood would be spilled at her hands, and if any more of it would belong to Bellamy.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope is a dangerous thing to have at court, but as Clarke learns to work together with Bellamy, things for the duchess, her family, and even the country may be looking up, as long as Clarke can decide what the truth really is.

Stopping in front of the little church tucked along the edge of the village, Clarke shifted uneasily in her saddle. Bellamy pulled his horse up next to hers, with Wick and Miller following close behind.

“We are meeting this suitor at a church?” She asked in trepidation.

“The priest is a friend of mine. And of The Nine.”

She released a sigh at Bellamy’s answer, relieved they were among people she could trust, but she did not look at him and hadn’t during their entire ride here. Things had been awkward enough when they had set out this morning, the rawness of their last interaction still rubbing uncomfortably at her nerves. It hadn’t helped that earlier today they had had to play the smitten couple; their pretense of leaving to meet Wick’s contact was that she and him were going on a leisurely couples’ ride, with the other men there for protection. She could still feel the weight of his head on her thighs where he had rested it while they lounged and ate lunch in a constructed moment of feigned intimacy.

Amusement had glittered in his eyes during the whole ordeal, and he had to remind her several times to stop scowling. _You’re supposed to be enthralled, not look like you want to strangle me_ , he had teased, his freckled cheeks bunching as he beamed up at her, wryness in his tone. She had bared a smile back at him—all teeth and no warmth—and he had laughed, loudly and fully. The rich sound had settled low in her belly, causing her lips to curve upwards in sincerity just for a second.

Clarke wasn’t smiling now, however, and neither was Bellamy. He dismounted stiffly, hand unconsciously slipping to grip to the dagger strapped to his side. In low tones, he instructed his friends to watch the entrances, then jerked his head to signal for her to follow him inside.

The drafty building was dim, smelling of dust, incense, and piety. It was so quiet that she could hear the two of them breathing, soft inhales and exhales much too in time with each other for her liking. When they reached the altar, Bellamy stopped and turned, planting his feet wide as he watched the door, waiting tensely for their guest. Clarke followed suit, anticipation building as an irritating itch under her skin.

Thankfully they didn’t have too wait too long before a loud wooden creak told them their man had arrived. She watched him walk up to the altar, a study in deep shadows and strong lines. He was a tower of a man with an expression that radiated fierceness but whose eyes spoke of quiet kindness.

“We’ve met,” Bellamy said, a bit stunned when he finally stopped before them.

The man quirked a half-smile. “Nice to see you again, Blake.”

Bellamy’s lips pursed, and the slight pause he took told Clarke that he did not remember their guest’s name. She would find it funny if there wasn’t so much riding on the situation.

“Lincoln, Duke of Côte.” He bowed but never took his eyes off of Bellamy. Clarke couldn’t decide whom to watch, as Bellamy’s expression grew disapproving at the introduction, and Lincoln steeled himself, determination rising in his eyes.

“I heard all about you from the Council,” Bellamy growled, stepping forward in challenge. “You had all but signed the marriage contract when my sister first ascended the throne, but then you were suddenly betrothed to someone else. You better not be wasting our time.”

The lines around Lincoln’s mouth tightened. “Familial obligation is something you should understand well, Blake. I was unfortunately forced to break my word to the Duchess because I did not have control over my own fate. My family, they—they had a different future in store for me, one that I did not want. I have rectified that situation now and am free to offer myself, under the original terms set by the Council, with the only addition being that I know have four thousand soldiers to offer instead of three.”

Clarke sucked in a breath, because his offer was almost as good as Tristan’s, and that would help greatly in swaying the Council in his direction. The tension in Bellamy’s shoulders released just the slightest bit, and from that she knew he was as impressed as she with the proposal. His disapproving, suspicious expression hadn’t budged an inch, however, telling her he was going also to be stubborn about this.

“A fine addition, but the Duchess still has more lucrative offers.”

Lincoln’s gaze turned stony, his eyes darkening to almost black. “More swords will no doubt help her with the French, but it also means more blades around for someone to stick in your, or her, back when you aren’t looking.”

“And you consider yourself safer?”

“Anyone, even the damn French prince, is safer than Forestier.”

The hatred in Lincoln’s tone was enough to silence Bellamy, and Clarke knew he agreed but didn’t want to concede the point. She thought quickly, trying to find a way to at least open up the possibility of him trusting this man.

“And what would you have to offer Octavia?” She said suddenly, earning surprised looks from both men.

“Like I said, four thousand soldiers, and my lands are—”

“Not the Duchess,” Clarke clarified. “Octavia.”

Understanding dawned on Lincoln, and he smiled, every line smoothing and every shadowing lightening—a surprising sight, to see this hardened warrior soften just at the mention of a name. “Support. Advice. My trust and respect, and the space to be independent and the strong ruler I know she will be.”

With every word he spoke, Clarke felt the anxiety in her chest ease. She didn’t know how, but the Duke was already in love with Octavia, and that could either make this arrangement a thousand times easier, or a thousand times harder. Sensing Bellamy shift beside her, she looked over to see him flexing his hand, a sign that he was hard-pressed to find fault with Lincoln’s sincere, heartfelt answer.

“It will take some time to pitch your offer to the Council,” he said grudgingly.

“I have all the time in the world to wait, but for your sister’s and the country’s sake, I hope it does not take too long,” Lincoln replied.

Before Bellamy could give the biting response that Clarke knew was on the tip of his tongue, she stepped forward, curtsying before she said, “We will do our best to move things along. Thank you on behalf of the Duchess for reaching out, and once we have an answer we will contact you.”

Lincoln bowed in return, giving them one last long, determined look before turning and striding outside, a flash of sunlight flooding the church as the door opened and then closed behind him. Clarke flinched at the brightness, but Bellamy didn’t move a muscle.

“You trust him already,” he said bitterly.

Clarke frowned at him. “You think he has an ulterior motive?”

“No.”

“She has to choose someone, Bellamy, and she can’t do much better than Lincoln.”

“I know.”

The pained acceptance and melancholy in his voice had her reaching up at squeeze his arm in reassurance. “You’ll still be here if something goes wrong.”

He swallowed thickly, telling her he was more worried about his ability to survive the vipers at court than he let on.

“ _I’ll_ be here if something goes wrong,” she added quietly. “You can count on me.”

His eyes connected with hers immediately, surprise warring with something warmer in them. “The convent is being more accommodating than I expected. They’ve never been so invested in my sister before.”

The knowing tone in his voice caused guilt and panic to prick Clarke’s heart. She ducked her head, hand automatically flying to grip the dagger hilt at her side.

“If the Duchess falls, Brittany falls, and then we are all at the mercy of the French and the church,” she finally replied, her mouth dry as she struggled to speak. “The Old Nine and our ways won’t stand a chance then.”

Clarke thought she heard him sigh tiredly, and then he pulled away from her, stepping off the dais. Her fingers tightening nervously around her knife, tracing the small etching of Mortain on the handle over and over again as she followed him out of the church without a word.

* * *

 Frowning at the decrepit stable down the path, Clarke lingered in the shadows of the archway, hesitant to reveal herself quite yet. She thought about pulling out the note again—the one with the Duchess’s seal that had been slipped under her door this morning, asking her to come to the old stables just before sunrise—but no additional scrutiny would tell her if it was a fake or not. It had passed all of the tests the convent had taught her, but she still wasn’t going to take any chances.

Quietly, she unsheathed her wrist daggers, dropping her hands by her sides to hide them in the folds of skirt as she walked into the abandoned barn. It was almost pitch-black, and Clarke cursed, wishing she had thought to bring a candle. When a soft rustling sounded behind her, she stilled. It was only for a moment, however, because someone weakly gripped her arm and tried to twist it around in a poor attempt at restraining her. Grimacin, she unsheated her blade with her other and and lashed out. The attacker stumbled backwards, an unsteady shadow in the dark building.

Fuming, because _how_ had she walked into a trap, Clarke raged forward, nimbly boxing them in. Quick as lightening, her arm came up to pin the person’s neck against the wall, her knife following close behind to trace along the skin of their racing pulse point in warning not to move.

“I guess I need more practice,” the person croaked, and horror washed over Clarke.

It _was_ Octavia. Immediately she jerked backwards, hand running along her blade, hoping she had not actually broken skin. The knife was dry, thankfully, and a mix of relief, fear, and anger welled up in her.

“Don’t _ever_ sneak up on me, or anyone from the convent. Ever,” she hissed.

“Sorry,” Octavia said, sounding sheepish but also much too excited for Clarke’s liking. “I didn’t think it through. I thought you would know it was me.”

“I wouldn’t still be alive if I assumed every mysterious note I receive is actually from the signed sender.”

“The convent taught you how to tell the difference right? And how to fight, to defend yourself?”

“Yes,” Clarke replied slowly, her mind quickly following Octavia’s train of thought, and probably her reason for asking to meet, and she continued in a disapproving tone, “It took me years to learn what I know, and I’m still one of the least experienced.”

“I want you to teach me.”

“No.”

“Bell used to teach me things, when I was younger. He didn’t have anyone to practice with anymore, not with us so far from court and our mother determined to keep us hidden. So I know the basics, and I’ve been keeping up with it even after coming here, but I’m not progressing. I want to learn more.”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Clarke—”

“ _Years_ , Your Grace, it took me years to be as good as I am. Besides, I don’t think anyone, especially your brother, is going to be okay with an assassin teaching the Duchess how to kill a man.”

“I don’t want to learn how to kill. I just want to know to keep someone from killing me _._ I should know how to protect myself. I need to know.”

At the fierceness and slightest hint of fear in Octavia’s voice, Clarke swallowed the rest of her prepared arguments. A sharp pang of understanding stung her chest as she cleared her throat, her heart having already changed its mind even as her head warned against what she was about to do.

“Do you know how to use a knife?” Clarke asked, twirling her own blade between her fingers.

“Yes. My aim isn’t great though,” Octavia answered enthusiastically.

With a resigned sigh, Clarke walked towards the back of the barn, where more light filtered in through the decaying wood. If she was going to do this, something which Bellamy, the Council, and probably Indra would disapprove of, it was going to be somewhere well-lit enough that they wouldn’t stab each other by accident.

“Your grip is probably off,” she said. “Come here and let me see what you’re doing wrong.”

Octavia hurried forward, her smile evident even in the dark of the stable, and Clarke hoped she wouldn’t come to regret this decision.

The Duchess proved to be an excellent student however: humble, clever, eager and determined. She reminded Clarke of some of the better novitiates she had helped tutor right before she had left for this mission, and a tiny wave of homesickness washed over her again. Shaking it off quickly, however, she resumed assessing how much knife-work and hand-to-hand combat the Duchess knew, until the echo of morning sounds from the castle invaded their otherwise quiet bubble.

“When can we meet again?” Octavia asked excitedly.

“If we’re going to do this, it has to be every day. Before sunrise, so no one notices us missing, and you have to bring company with you, no arguments.”

“I can’t bring guards—they’ll tell Bellamy.”

“Would any of your ladies be willing?”

Octavia paused for a thoughtful minute, then her face lit up. “Monroe, probably. And Harper.”

“Then I will see you and them tomorrow.”

Clarke watched Octavia slip out of the stable, waiting a few minutes before following her. Everything about this was a bad idea, so the least she could do was trail the duchess to make sure she got back to her quarters safely.

And she did, Octavia easily distracting the few people she ran into on the way, her skill at diversions almost rivaling Raven’s. Truly, if her parentage wasn’t so set in stone, Clarke would think Octavia was one of Mortain’s. Still, she only breathed easily again once Octavia had closed the door to her chambers with a definitive click, allowing her to return to her own quarters with slightly less guilt eating at her.

So distracted with thinking of logistics for this training endeavor on the way back to her room, however, Clarke didn’t notice Emerson until she nearly ran into him. Narrowing her eyes, because he had no business wandering around the halls on this side of the castle, she murmured her apology, though it was toneless, devoid of any real regret.

“The fault is mine, Demoiselle Clarke,” he offered, voice saccharine and supercilious. “And I would be happy to escort you to your destination to make up for it.”

He didn’t wait for her response before entwining his arm with hers and guiding her down the hall in the direction she had been heading. Clarke bit the inside of her cheek to keep from wrenching out of his grasp, annoyed as his presumption and barely concealed attempt to nose into her business.

“I’m surprised to see you up and about this early,” he said after a few moments of stony silence on her part. “Most ladies of your well, _situation_ feel the need to get their beauty sleep.”

Clarke resisted the urge to pinch him. This was the part she hated the most about taking on the role of mistress: the sly, underhanded comments that were meant to demean her subtly, like a slow-acting poison. Biting back her annoyance, because she was just as resistant to verbal toxins as she was to physical ones, she smiled at Emerson placidly and then said, “I’ve been told I don’t need it. Besides, looks aren’t everything to some of us.”

“Blake always did have odd taste in women.”

“Not as odd as I’ve heard your prince has a taste for. Apparently he likes wooing the Duchess with threats on her life.”

Emerson immediately bristled, his grip growing painfully tight on her wrist. If he didn’t let go soon, she’d be forced to break his grip, something she absolutely would take pleasure in, as it would probably snap a few of his fingers, but also something that would put here more on his radar. Neither her, Bellamy, nor the Duchess could afford that, so she tamped down the urge.

“You should be careful whom you accuse of such things, mademoiselle, especially when you keep such company as you do.”

“Bellamy would never—”

“Perhaps not, but his mother is, let’s say, _close_ with Kane, and there is no one who fought harder against Octavia’s legitimacy than the old Duke’s brother. It is common knowledge around the castle that he originally lobbied for Octavia, her brother, and her mother to be executed for treason, as he and many others believed the evidence they presented of her parentage was forged. He claimed there was no way a royal child, not even an illegitimate one, could have been hidden away for sixteen years. Or did you not know that?”

“Then why would Aurora be sleeping with Kane, if he tried to kill her?”

Emerson smirked. “We all have different ways of surviving. Some are less tasteful than others.”

Condescension and disdain dripped from his every word, and Clarke fought against reaching for her knife, just to feel the comforting press of it into her palm as she imagined the painful wounds she could give this obnoxious man. “Says the man spying on a fifteen-year-old girl for a greedy ruler who will simply do away with her the second he gets control of her duchy.”

Emerson laughed darkly. “You are certainly loyal to your country. As am I to my own, so maybe we have more in common than you think.”

Clarke ground her teeth in silence, every part of her rebelling against his statement.

“I am only telling you what is common knowledge around court, since Blake seems to have given you quite a biased version of it. And it is well known that Kane will do anything to get Octavia off of the throne, including assassination. It is impossible that Aurora does not know of this, yet she still continues to spend all of her time with him.”

“And I ask again, why would the Duchess’s own mother want her dead?”

“You really do not know how deep-seated the rift is between her and her son after he stole Octavia away to the castle? And of Aurora’s ability to hold a nasty grudge? There is nothing in this world that Blake loves as much as his sister, and the stories I have heard about her tell me that she is plenty ruthless to eliminate one child of hers just to spite the other.”

“Bellamy would never allow that to happen.”

“As I said, all of this is common knowledge to anyone who pays attention at court, which is everyone, including your supposedly shrewd lover. Yet why hasn’t he done anything to either squash the rumors, or to stop his mother? People have been put to death for less than what I’ve heard whispered around the castle about her and Kane.”

As much as Clarke hated to admit it, Emerson wasn’t wrong. Even the slightest whiff of treason in an atmosphere as volatile as the one surrounding the Duchess could have deadly outcomes. Maybe Bellamy was holding back because of Octavia, hoping that she and Aurora would reconcile.

“Why should I believe you?” She finally said when they arrived at her door.

“Because France wants Octavia on the throne as much as you do—”

“Just so the prince can marry her and absorb the duchy, something impossible to do with Kane as the Duke—”

“—regardless, we have enemies in common, which is as good a basis for friendship as any.”

Her repugnance at that idea must have shown on her face, because Emerson smirked at her. And before she could protest, he snatched up her other hand and pressed a sharp kiss to her knuckles.

“Happy to have had the chance to enlighten you, Demoiselle Clarke.”

She gave him a tight, unkind smile before slipping her room, wondering how an accidental run-in had turned into that disaster of a conversation. Even worse, he was right: it had been enlightening, in ways that made her heart sink, reminding her of much she still had yet to learn about the situation and the players at court.

Eyeing the incomplete letter to Indra on her trunk, she strode over, freshly determined to finish it. Though she added much more information about Bellamy and his family than she had intended days ago, she still hesitated to include what she had learned today. Emerson was not to be trusted, even though some of his arguments made an odd sort of sense to her. Her quill hovered over the full parchment for a full minute before she instead signed her name, deciding that was enough for Indra to know for now.

The rest could wait.

* * *

For the next few days, Clarke woke anxiously every morning, expecting her raven to already have returned with a letter from Indra. The dread of the disappointment, reprimand, or even anger that would come after such a lackluster report—for she worried that it was, that she had been too lenient on the Blakes, that Wallace would have sent something much different to the abbess—sat heavy in her stomach. It made it hard to eat, and Bellamy frowned every time she just pushed her food around instead of consuming it.

The only thing that distracted her was the morning sessions with Octavia and her ladies. Monroe and Harper were just as eager to learn to fight as the Duchess, and their enthusiasm was the bright shot of thread in the otherwise dark, tangled fabric of Clarke’s days. It didn’t help that Bellamy also grew increasingly cross as the next Council meeting drew closer, and thus the imminent announcement of Lincoln’s proposal. The fact that Forestier was still parading about the castle as if he owned it was a good sign, indicating he was unaware of his competition. However, the Council still stood in their way, and Clarke watched Bellamy’s face grow gaunter and tighter in the week leading up to the meeting.

She tried to help—talking out tactics and strategy with him, sometimes even just sitting by his side while he read—to reassure him that they at least had a chance, but he never seemed to hear her. It was only when he off-handedly asked her to be nearby when the Council finally assembled and she said yes, causing a shadow of a smile to appear on his face, that Clarke at least had a hint that she was helping him, the Duchess, and Brittany in some productive fashion.

 _But how are you helping the convent,_ a sneering voice echoed in her mind, sharp and sore, like a splinter under the skin. She was no closer to discovering Bellamy’s true loyalties, though from her perspective everything he had done had been solely to protect his sister. She felt herself slipping, waves of obligation washing over and threatening to drown her as the Council meeting approached, wondering how much longer she could hold her breath before succumbing to the tides of loyalty pulling her in opposite directions.

By the time the morning of the meeting arrived, no letter had been sent back to her, and Clarke still felt like she was drowning. She tried to keep her breaths deep and even as she walked to Octavia’s chambers to meet the siblings, and it was a struggle the whole way.

She completely forgot about getting enough air, however, when she heard the sounds of a heated argument coming from behind the Duchess’s closed chamber door. Hurrying forward, she winced as she listened to Bellamy shout at Octavia, reprimanding her for being indiscreet. Apprehension and guilt flooded her, and she hoped that he had not found out about their training sessions.

Now cautious, because Bellamy in a rage was something she needed to be very well prepared for, she lingered outside the door, hoping to get a better grasp on the situation before barging in. When Lincoln’s name came into the conversation—apparently he and Octavia had been secretly corresponding for months now—Clarke let out a small sigh of relief. Bracing herself, she knocked on the door loudly, figuring it was best to interrupt the siblings before anyone else passed by and heard their argument.

Of course, no one answered, and she pushed into the room, only slightly irritated that neither of them had bothered to lock the door.

“—irresponsible, careless, immature! Did you even think of what would happen if this got out?” Bellamy bellowed at his sister, his back to Clarke, fury written into every line of his body. “Any chance you have at other suitors would evaporate, they would say you were compromised, that your judgment is clouded—we would lose every ounce of our already weak sway over the Council. What were you _thinking_?”

Octavia’s face was twisted into a nasty expression, her eyes red from angry tears and only focused on her brother, not even noticing Clarke. “No one knows!” She yelled back, gesturing wildly. “And even if somebody finds out, it won’t matter, not after the meeting today!”

“Only if the Council accepts his offer, which I am inclined to vote against now,” Bellamy snapped. “Clearly Lincoln is not as forthcoming as I thought.”

“He cares about me, Bell, and about Brittany! And if you don’t support him, I will never forgive you. And I’ve forgiven you for a lot—for the way we left, for _mom_ —”

Bellamy choked angrily, stepping forward in challenge. “Don’t bring her into this—”

“She won’t even look at me if we’re in the same room!”

“I did all of this for you, to protect you,” Bellamy hissed, the chilling sound of his fury-mangled voice sending chills down Clarke’s spine. “And you put it all at risk, your safety, your future, just because this man tells you he loves you.”

“Bellamy!” Clarke interrupted sharply, finally moved speak by the wounded look on Octavia’s face.

He froze, then turned slowly, his jaw ticking and his eyes flashing dangerously. She knew he was about to turn his anger on her, to tell her this was none of her business—and it probably wasn’t. The convent should have no interest in the Blakes’ personal dramas, aside from how much they revealed about the characters of the individuals. And despite the unkind barbs the two siblings had lobbied back and forth, Clarke knew deep in her gut that the hostility was rooted in love, not true hatred.

“It’s almost time for the Council to convene, right next door might I add,” she said, keeping her voice low and even. “I suggest you both delay this conversation until another time, when there are less ears about, and you both have calmer heads.”

Neither sibling seemed to receive her suggestion welcomingly, but they also couldn’t fight the logic in it. The only thing worse than Octavia favoring one suitor—and not even the most practically appropriate one—was their courting becoming public knowledge. Bellamy was right, on that one count.

“I’ll see you in there, Your Grace,” he bit out.

With a tight nod and one last scathing look at his sister, Bellamy strode towards the door. He was almost outside when Octavia darted forward, calling out to him softly.

“Please, Bell,” she pleaded, tears in her eyes again, now desperate ones. “Please. Fight for him. Fight for _us_.”

Clarke watched Bellamy slump, his sister’s whispered, distressed words breaking him in a way that her furious ones couldn’t. He nodded again, a much more agreeable but also exhausted bob of his head this time. 

“Thank you,” Octavia murmured, a hint of a smile on her face.

Octavia remained that way for a few moments after the door snapped shut behind Bellamy. Then, gradually, her expression dimmed to something neutral and emotionless, power gathering around her, clinging to her hair, her skin, every fiber of her. With a final lift of her head, the Duchess appeared, just as intimidating and inspiring as she had been when Clarke first met her. With a simple nod farewell, Octavia followed her brother out the door, leaving Clarke alone in the ducal chambers.

It irked her that the stone walls were much too thick to eavesdrop through, and loitering in the hallway outside the Council room was too dangerous to attempt. So, knowing that she would be stuck here for a while, Clarke pulled out her knife and started up her usual throwing routine. The repeating sequence of thuds as she struck the wooden doorframe again and again lulled her into relaxation, such that she unexpectedly startled when a quiet gasp sounded from behind her. Whipping around, her gaze fell on some of Octavia’s other ladies—Mel, and Fox, she thought—who were staring at her with wide eyes, clearly shocked at her skill with the weapons. Monroe hastily appeared over their shoulders, Harper close behind, both sending apologetic looks at Clarke.

“We tried to keep them in the back, but the noise made them curious,” Monroe relented.

Clarke quickly read the two younger girls’ faces, assessing the balance of fear and curiosity in them. Thankfully, for her and her cover, there wasn’t much true fright—it was mostly shock. Sighing, because she couldn’t resist them any more than she could Octavia, she beckoned them forward and began to catch Mel and Fox up on what she had been teaching the other three women.

As engaged in the lesson as she was, she almost forgot about the meeting taking place next door until a burst of voices echoed from out in the hallway. Hastily snatching her knives back from the girls, Clarke had barely stowed them away in time before the door flew open.

The dark look on Bellamy’s face had the Duchess’s ladies scattering, but Clarke stood her ground. Aware of the chattering Council members outside the room—Anya was being particularly loud, plainly expressing her displeasure with the subterfuge regarding Lincoln—Clarke merely raised her eyebrows in question. Bellamy gave the tiniest nods in response, telling her that maybe it hadn’t gone as poorly as she had thought based on his expression. Tilting her head in question, she tried to find out what had him so tense, but before he could answer, Chancellor Wallace appeared at his side.

“Her Grace mentioned you were in here, waiting for an audience with her, but I am afraid she is otherwise detained at the moment. May I escort you back to your room, Clarke?”

There was no doubt that Wallace’s words were an order, not an actual request, so with a tight smile, she followed his already retreating back out of the room. As she brushed by Bellamy, he snagged her hand briefly, leaning it to whisper: _I’ll find you later and explain._ The warmth of his voice in her ear and his rough palm against hers steeled Clarke as she stepped up next to Wallace, whose stony expression and ramrod–straight posture spoke loudly of his displeasure.

“I have no doubt that you have known of Lincoln’s offer for some time now,” he began in a clipped tone. “Blake confided in you.”

“I found out on my own first, but like I told you previously, I have his trust. So, yes, he confided in me. Just as the abbess wanted,” she added, her voice growing sharp at the end.

“And did you tell the abbess of this development?”

“Yes.” The lie rolled easily off of Clarke’s tongue, the condescension in Wallace’s tone making any remaining drop of guilt within her evaporate.

“You swear it on Mortain?”

She silently cursed him for that little trick, hesitating only a second before replying, “I swear on Mortain that I have done my duty to my convent, something that lies between me and the abbess only.”

The way Wallace frowned meant he hadn’t missed her deliberate sidestepping of his true question. Still, he seemed to let the topic drop, walking beside her in silence. It was only when they got nearer to her quarters that he spoke again.

“I am only looking out for you, Clarke. I’ve warned you before: Blake is a slippery man. Don’t be blinded by his charm.”

“He has charm, no doubt, but there is nothing but sincerity in his intentions toward the Duchess,” she replied. “I believe he would do anything for her, to protect her. And isn’t that exactly what the convent should want to know of him? That he is looking out for her and the country’s best interest?”

“Yet he was meeting with the two traitors you dispatched, and you have yet to bring forth evidence against anyone else close to the Duchess as the possible mole for the French.”

“He said they were willing to flip again, to help the Duchess.”

“And you believed him.”

“I believe he spoke truly.”

Wallace scoffed. “Words mean very little when actions speak differently.”

“He made a gods’ oath,” Clarke burst out, her calm demeanor finally breaking as her frustration overflowed. “Blake swore on Saint Camulos that he would sacrifice whatever it took—even his own life—to keep his sister on the throne, to keep her safe. I heard the words from his mouth from my own ears.”

Feeling confident, Clarke waited for the surprise to appear on Wallace’s face. Making a gods’ oath was a serious statement, as legends of the Old Nine told that an oathbreaker’s punishment was one worse than death. Bellamy had not made his lightly, and she gambled that such a fact should hold weight with Wallace, someone so closely connected to the convent and the old ways.

Instead of being impressed by this fact, Wallace instead looked disappointed, even disdainful.

“Blake has made a gods’ oath before. As he broke that one, I have little confidence that he will keep this new one any better than he did the last.”

Clarke opened her mouth to protest his admission—Bellamy _couldn’t_ have, everything she knew about him told her, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was not the kind of man to flout the power of the gods so carelessly, not when his sister’s life was on the line. Still, she couldn’t detect any deception in Wallace’s tone or expression, and once again she felt like she was drowning, lost among waves of information she seemed to have no hope of ever mastering.

“I hope I was not wrong about you, Clarke,” Wallace finally concluded as shifted away, heading back towards his own chambers. “Indra assured me you were immensely talented at your work, and what I saw early on also told me the same. Do not let yourself get distracted. You have far too much potential to be led astray by a handsome smile or a kind word.”

“My duty to Mortain had never wavered,” she snapped, her patience with his thinly veiled attempts at exerting control over her and this mission finally wearing thin. “I know where my loyalties lie.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about. I will reassure Indra that you are on track, and hopefully soon we will be able to unmask the traitor among us.”

Though Clarke bristled at his implication that Indra was displeased with her progress, she nodded in agreement, not wanting to antagonize him further. As she watched him walk away, narrowing her eyes at his confident stride, she felt oddly settled, despite his valiant attempt to stir doubt in her about Bellamy. She didn’t distrust what he said was true, but she was also certain that there had to be more to the story, and she had better find out what that was very soon.                                            


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as it seems Clarke and Bellamy have won the battle to secure Octavia's safety and happiness, enemies strike and destroy their hard-won victory. In the midst of turmoil and defeat, however, something new also blossoms and shakes Clarke to her core.

“I got it!” Harper yelled, hands flying up in victory.

Clarke sent her a pleased smile, watching as she danced over to retrieve her knife from the center of the target. Octavia whistled in congratulations, then continued practicing her own more challenging task of throwing her knives while she was moving. Whether it had been Bellamy’s early lessons, or also natural-born skill, the Duchess was progressing in her training at an impressively rapid rate. She had almost leapt out of her skin this morning when Clarke had told her they could begin working on her knife skills from horseback.

Octavia had pleaded for them to start today, and Clarke had almost given in, but only because she wanted to get the Duchess alone. In the days since the Council meeting, while the members debated the merits of Lincoln’s offer, she had decided that asking Bellamy himself about the things Emerson and Wallace had told her was out of the question. Several times she had tried—gearing up during one of their shared meals, or one night when he came to visit her again as part of their pretense, or while they played chess on a few occasions—but she had balked every time. Stubborn as she was, however, she finally determined that finding out from Octavia would be a better option.

It would be difficult, no doubt, to talk about something so private and so close to the Duchess’s heart, especially without rousing her suspicions, but the urgency of determining Bellamy’s true allegiance picked at her conscience every minute. If he was innocent, she needed to let the convent know. If he was guilty, well—she didn’t particularly want to think about that outcome.

She wasn’t willing to risk the Duchess’s safety just to get her away from the castle to unearth her family secrets, however, so they stayed in the stables for one more day. And it was a good day—Harper finally got the hang of hitting a target, and Monroe had bested Clarke in two out of five rounds of hand-to-hand. The girls were improving, and Clarke told them so happily as they picked up the stables in the light of the just-rising sun. Their chorus of thank you’s sent a warm shot of contentment through her. It felt nice, to be needed—the convent needed her too, of course, but this type of need felt less serious, less exhausting.

Her serenity dissolved, however, when Mel, who had been keeping lookout through the slats of the stable wall, hissed a warning.

“Your Grace, your brother is coming. He’s headed for the stables, for us!”

Clarke’s stomach dropped, and she exchanged a panicked look with Octavia. Shepherding the girls to the back exit, she and the Duchess hastily shooed them outside, but they lost their own chance to escape when the stable door started to slide open, leaving them only one choice.

Clarke snagged Octavia’s arm, tugging her into the shadows behind the grain bin. Holding her breath, she listened to the rickety door roll open, followed by Bellamy’s nearly silent, wary footsteps as he walked inside.

_He knows_ , Octavia mouthed, setting her face stubbornly. She was already preparing for an argument, but the way Bellamy was walking around—suspicious, but not confident—told Clarke he was probably only following his instinct, not any real evidence.

She squeezed the Duchess’s arm. _Wait,_ her grip said. _Wait._

His footsteps grew no more certain, convincing her he neither knew she and his sister were there, or what they had been doing. It didn’t make his presence here any less dangerous, and she began to seriously reconsider progressing with Octavia’s training. Besides, if Indra knew how much time she was devoting to this instead of her mission, there would be hell to pay from the convent.

_But would Mortain really care?_ A scornful—and almost familiar voice—echoed in her head, distracting her from the current situation.

The sound of a second pair of footsteps pulled her back, however, and she nearly gasped in surprise when she heard the person speak.

“You’re in the wrong place if you’re looking for a ride, Blake,” the girl who was without a doubt Raven drawled, her footsteps light, slow, and certain.

Bellamy had stopped pacing, a good thing for her and Octavia, as he was now less likely to stumble upon them in their dark corner. Still, her heart raced anxiously, wondering what Raven was doing here, around Bellamy, and how they knew each other.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” He shot back abrasively. “More of Forestier’s dirty work?”

“You doing more of Her Grace’s?”

“What I do is in service of this country.”

“Hm, sounds like a lot of hard work. Not much time for fun.”

“I find my opportunities,” he replied dryly.

“Yes. But it seems your little blonde opportunity isn’t keep you busy enough, if your presence out here at this early hour is any indication.”

Clarke swallowed, refusing to look at Octavia, who was shifting uncomfortably beside her. The Duchess knew of the pretense she and Bellamy were living, but it didn’t make hearing the implication any easier for either of them. Raven no doubt had figured out Clarke’s mission by now, as whip-smart and attuned to the convent’s practices as she was, making this conversation and her line of questioning all the more puzzling.

“Raven,” Bellamy warned, his boots shuffling against the dirt.

“My offer still stands, you know.”

Clarke’s heart clenched painfully, because she had heard Raven speak in that tone—the one that spoke of dark corners and hurried kisses, soft touches and stolen moments, the one that she herself had practiced along with her friend in their lessons at the convent—but it had never sounded so convincing, so believable. Raven detested the practice, said it was a weak way of going about their business. Clarke had agreed, but had tried her best anyways, whereas Raven had always blown off those training sessions. Ironic, then, that her friend was the one using it, and excelling at it, in the field, while Clarke floundered.

_You had no problem with Shumway, or your first target_ , that nagging voice taunted again. Clarke bit the inside of her cheek, using the pain to will that fact away.

Forcing her thoughts back to the pair, she tried to riddle out her friend’s angle. If Raven was pursuing Bellamy that meant someone, either Forestier, or even Indra herself, had given the order. Her confusion gave way to nausea, the image of Bellamy—face pale and eyes lifeless—flashing before her eyes, for there was likely no other end to such an assignment, not when Raven was involved.

“And my previous answer still stands,” Bellamy replied. “My interests lie elsewhere.”

“Pity. I wouldn’t have pegged you to be the type to get attached.”

“I’m not attached to Clarke.”

Raven laughed, a little bit cruelly, a little bit sorrowfully, the foreign sound sending chills down Clarke’s spine. “Liar,” she whispered. “A fine time to show your underbelly, with the wolves practically at your door.”

“And I suppose you’re among the pack.” His tone was wary and curious, rather than aggressive, and Clarke almost risked peaking her head up, desperate to read both their expressions. The oddness of the conversation ate at her, the way they vacillated between confrontational and almost amused.

“Watch your back,” Raven finally replied, her voice soft but steely. “All of you.”

The slight lift to her voice at the end had Clarke’s breath catching, because Raven _knew._ She knew they were back here—who knows how, but then again, she had always been the best out of all of the novitiates. Clarke’s thoughts clambered over one another, her mind complete chaos, as she vaguely registered the sound of Raven retreating, and then Bellamy doing the same several minutes later.

“Clarke, let’s go!” The Duchess hissed when they were finally alone.

Shaking her head, Clarke let Octavia pull her up, her muscles screaming in protest after being crouched low for so long. In silence, they walked back to the castle, both considering what they had overheard. It was almost too much for Clarke to try and figure out what the Duchess was thinking too, considering how tangled her own thoughts were.

They had only gone one turn off course, though, before she halted, narrowing her eyes at Octavia, because she wasn’t that distracted by Raven and Bellamy to notice their detour.

“This isn’t the way back to your chambers,” she said slowly.

“I want to see Lincoln,” Octavia insisted, her chin tipping up regally.

Clarke suppressed a frustrated groan. Of course Octavia knew he was in the castle. Bellamy had snuck him into a deserted chamber in the east wing after the Council meeting, figuring it would ease things if the duke was on hand once they made a decision. She and him of them had been the only ones aware, yet somehow the Duchess had found out as well.

“Your Grace—”

“ _Please,_ Clarke. If the Council votes no, gods know when I’ll be able to see him again.”

Sighing, because apparently she was as powerless to Octavia’s heartfelt pleas as her brother, Clarke walked forward again, glaring as the Duchess beamed at her.

“At least Bellamy can’t murder me twice,” she muttered under her breath, trying to guess if he’d be more angry about the training sessions or this visit, if he ever found out.

Octavia pretended not to hear, though the soft breath of a laugh she let out betrayed her amusement at the comment.

Any irritability at the Duchess’s ability to manipulate her, however, faded instantly when she saw the way Octavia launched herself into Lincoln’s arms, the man’s face flooding with surprise and pleasure as he enveloped her. The two exchanged excited whispers, and Clarke couldn’t bring herself to listen in. She should—the convent would certainly want her to, had trained her to—but there was something about the couple, their earnest and sweet energy, that had her ducking her head, turning away from their lightness to give them privacy.

“Your Grace,” she warned after far too long had passed and far too much space had disappeared between the couple again. Octavia really needed to get back to her chambers, as no doubt Bellamy, her governess Diana, or some other member of the Council was looking for her at the moment.

Clarke had to call her name twice more before the pair finally separated, Lincoln giving her a long, heated kiss in farewell that had Octavia clinging to him again. Losing her patience—and her confidence that they could manage to get back undiscovered—Clarke finally tugged the Duchess away and down the hall, biting back her complaints despite her concern. Octavia didn’t get too many moments of happiness like this one, and she had no inclination to ruin it, no matter how much she wanted to warn her of the danger of becoming so attached to a man who might never be her husband.

_Or who might be dead within the week._ The voice had returned, sounding more like Raven this time, that familiar tone of cynicism, sharp, biting, and potent, yet still not quite strong enough to completely mask the fear lingering underneath. Clarke wondered when Indra’s demanding voice had been replaced with her friend’s skeptical one, but she didn’t have time to wonder about that now, not when she had to get Octavia across two wings and up three floors without anyone questioning their presence.

_You are too soft-hearted for an assassin, Griffin,_ the voice teased, and Clarke almost smiled, longing to hear the real Raven’s voice sing with that type of levity again.

That would be a long time coming, if ever, she knew, because the storm of subterfuge and betrayals building around court grew ever bigger as the days passed, and all Clarke could do was wait for it to break violently around them.

Her smile turned sharp at the thought, because if there was one thing she was good at, it was weathering a storm. 

* * *

 

That night she dreamed of heavy rain and howling winds, crashing thunder and crackling electrical strikes. As the squall raged around her, she raged back, screaming at the top of her lungs, until it began to call back to her, her name spoken in between the flashes of lightening as the rolling booms sounded closer together.

_ClarkeClarkeClarke_ , the storm rumbled.

_Clarke. Clarke._

_Clarke._

“Clarke!”

She startled awake, her hands coming up to clutch the arms shaking her shoulders. The familiar cords of muscle and warmth under her palms registered even with sleep still clinging to her eyes and her thoughts.

“Bellamy?” She questioned as she struggled to untangle herself from her sheets.

He broke away, laughing and laughing and laughing, and she fought against the darkness to see him, wondering what in the world was going on. When she finally did adjust to the shadows, she took in the dazzling smile on his face, the way his eyes danced in triumph. Inexplicably, giddiness welled up in her too, an uncontrollable reflex to his joy.

“She’s safe. They voted yes. They accepted Lincoln’s offer. She’s safe!” He exclaimed softly, moving forward again to pull her into a tight hug. “Octavia is safe.”

Her bare toes bumped into the tips of his boots, then brushed over the laces as he hauled her upwards, spinning her halfway around. She could feel his exhilaration in the way his heartbeat thudded through his chest into hers and how his breath came fast and hot against the back of her neck. Smiling, she lost herself in his embrace, pressing her lips into the crook of his neck as the full impact of his rushed announcement hit her.

“You did it,” she murmured against his skin, her grin growing wider as his laugh rustled her loose curls.

With one last tightening of his arms, he released her, looking at her in wonder.

“ _We_ did it,” he corrected immediately.

The unwavering openness in his voice undid her, all of the needling doubts his enemies had stuck in her heart brushed away. Tonight he wasn’t a soldier, a patron of Saint Camulos, a politician, the convent’s suspect, or her opponent—tonight he was simply a brother who had finally found a way to make his sister both safe and happy.

There wasn’t a more honest picture than the one Bellamy made now, brown eyes alight and cheeks flushed in victory, his shirt slightly untucked and his hair a mess—he had been running his hands through it, in stress or in relief, no doubt—staring at her as if he almost didn’t believe all of this was real.

“We should have a drink,” she said quickly, thickly, trying to figure out why her pulse was fluttering so rapidly, a much more nervous rhythm than the one happiness usually set for her heart. There was something else rising in her tonight, something she didn’t quite have the grasp of yet, something that grew every time his full eyes locked on hers.

“Just one?” he quipped back, grinning at her. “I think we deserve a few more than one.”

Her breath caught at the sight of the boy he could have been before the weight of the country rested on him, before he had to save lives, and take them, before he had to live always looking over his shoulder for the knife coming at his back. She nodded, walking over to her small table where the pitcher of wine from dinner still sat, listening to him follow her closely. Pouring them both a glass, Clarke turned around with a small smile, lifting her cup as he took his and matched up to hers.

“To Octavia,” she murmured, warmth flooding through her at the way Bellamy softened upon hearing his sister’s name.

“To Octavia.”

She raised her glass to her lips, the wine burning slightly as it flowed down her throat. The tingling numbness radiated out from there, furling across her chest and enveloping her.

It was the wine, and not Bellamy’s smile, she could now claim was making her a bit dizzy, and she continued to drink, letting herself revel in the feeling.

_Liar_ , Raven whispered in her head.

Clarke just took another sip, for once ignoring the nagging voices of duty and reason, enjoying their moment of victory, as there was no telling when, or even if, another one would come along anytime soon.

* * *

By the time Bellamy left to go back to his own room—his cheeks rosy, steps a bit unsteady, but his smile as broad as ever—it was only a few hours until dawn. Even if the excitement coursing through her wasn’t keeping her up, it wouldn’t be long before the light of the rising sun was doing the same. So, instead of going back to sleep, Clarke tried to run through her training exercises, not wanting to neglect her own progress during her time here. She was too keyed up to focus properly, however. And now that her doubts about Bellamy had all but vanished, all that was left was her concern for Raven.

It niggled at her conscience, the why of it all. Why Raven was at court, with Forestier. Why she hadn’t contacted her and Maya in months. Why she was pursuing Bellamy, and why only half-heartedly, because Clarke was sure, as good of a novitiate as Raven was, she would no doubt have achieved that goal by now.

The questions picked at her, needling her sense of responsibility to her friend, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. With a roll of her shoulders, she changed into dark, nondescript clothing, geared up, and slipped out of her room towards the wing where Forestier was staying. She had ferretted out the information from some unsuspecting housemaids a while back, just to be thorough in her investigations. So far she had steered clear, knowing the risk of getting caught and blowing her cover outweighed any benefits from spying on the group.

Raven was worth the risk, though, so Clarke didn’t falter once as she slid along the shadows of the deserted castle hallways, still entrenched in darkness as they were. Only the main hallways had torches burning at all times, so she stayed on the side passages, practically flying down them. She was in a race against the sun that she couldn’t afford to lose.

When she rounded the corner into Forestier’s wing, she nearly groaned at the number of doors located along the long hallway. Knowing she had very little time to waste, however, she immediately began extending her senses, looking for those flickers of life, flames of a being’s very soul, that the convent had trained her to tune in to. Most of them were strong, and bright, if also dormant at the moment—no one was close to death here, only asleep. They were all the same though—entirely human, golden and warm, lacking that little shot of silver and tepidness characteristic of Mortain’s own—telling her Raven was not among these sleeping guests.

The souls behind the next few doors were the same, and Clarke felt her nerves rattle as she drew closer and closer to Tristan’s own chambers. She was not afraid of him, but she also did not want to test her skills against him this night. Praying to Mortain, she tried another set of doors, and another, but still no Raven.

A loud snore from inside one of the rooms startled her, sending her already erratic pulse into an even more frenetic beat. She swallowed, counting to five, trying to regain her composure. Approaching the last door before the count’s room, she reached out with her mind again, smiling when she made contact with this soul, because _finally._

Sliding out her lock pick, it only took her a few minutes to undo the door. As skilled as Raven was, she had a tendency to fall into patterns, something their tutors reprimanded her for but had Clarke very relieved at the moment. She slipped inside, not in the least surprised to see her friend sitting up in bed, wide-awake.

“Took you long enough,” Raven said dryly. “Maya would’ve found me in half the time.”

“She wouldn’t have been able to get the lock open though, I bet.”

Clarke watched Raven struggle against a smile, letting her own spread across her face without reservation. She was too happy to see her friend to keep up any bit of her cover here, not when she was finally alone with the one person who knew her best in the world. The grin eventually won over Raven’s stoicism, though it didn’t reach her eyes, the hardness in them seemingly unbreakable. Gods, she and Maya had spent years breaking down her walls the first time that it tore at Clarke to see them back up again after only a few months of separation.  

Before she knew it, she was striding over to Raven, who was pushing off the bed hastily. Meeting halfway, they slammed into a tight hug, tears welling up in Clarke’s eyes at the long-overdue reunion.

“I prayed to Mortain everyday that you were safe,” she said when they finally pulled apart.

Raven huffed out a cynical laugh. “You should know better. Our god doesn’t grant wishes like that. Or wishes at all.”

“Raven,” she warned. “Please.”

“Still believing in Indra’s fairytales, I see.”

Clarke pursed her lips slightly, not liking the flippant tone Raven apparently still took on when talking about Mortain or the convent. As eagerly as she had took to the physical and intellectual training that had been provided to them, she had always balked when it came to the philosophy of the convent, sneering at the promise of justice and distrustful of the older sisters, especially the abbess. Sometimes Clarke wondered why she had bothered to stay with them at all, thinking of that first night when she had been so ready to fly away. _Little bird just wants to be free._

But stayed she had, It seems fieldwork hadn’t done much to change her friend’s opinions about the convent, and as reckless as they were, she was maybe a little bit glad that Raven wasn’t as altered as the darkness in her eyes made her seem.

“I believe that she serves Mortain honorably, and has our country’s best interests at heart,” Clarke countered.

“And what about _your_ best interests? Or mine? Or Maya’s?”

“We pledged our lives, our loyalty, and our hearts to Mortain—”

“But _not_ the abbess,” Raven interrupted, mouth pursed mulishly.

Clarke sighed, wondering why she had attempted to make this argument again. Raven was never going to change her mind. _But have you?_ That voice in her mind whispered again, this time taking on a lower pitch, no longer that of her friend’s, though it seemed so familiar.

“Why were you pursuing Bellamy?” She blurted after a quiet beat, tired of dancing around why she was actually here.

Raven snorted. “I thought your heart belonged to Mortain.”

“He’s my mission—to investigate him and his loyalties,” Clarke tried to explain, pointedly ignoring her friend’s implication. “If you also have orders to do the same, either from Indra or Forestier, I need to know, and why.”

“I do as little for Forestier as possible,” Raven said bitterly, that worrisome darkness inking up her eyes again at the mention of the count. “And Indra gave me no such mission.”

“Then why?”

“Because I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and you at him. And I’m not the only one who has noticed, but I am the only one here who cares about you.” Raven paused, her lips curving into a wry smile. “I was doing it for you, looking out for you.”

“There’s no need. It’s not like tha—”

Raven held up her hand, tired amusement settling on her face.

Clarke closed her eyes, because if there was one person she couldn’t lie to at court, it was her. “It doesn’t matter. My life, what I’ve chosen, I can’t have him.”

“Says who? The convent? Indra? Mortain? Fuck them. Fuck them all!”

“Raven!”

“If he’s going to smite me for that, then I welcome it, if it gets me out of this hellhole of an assignment.”

All thoughts of Bellamy fled Clarke’s mind at the tiniest note of despair she heard in Raven’s voice. “Why are you here, Raven?”

“Why are any of us sent out?” She replied with a dark laugh.

“Justice.”

“Vengeance,” Raven spat back immediately. “Nothing so noble as you think, that I promise you.”

Rubbing her eyes frustratedly, Clarke willed her pulse to settle. She missed her friend sorely and didn’t want to spend what little time they had arguing in circles. “Is it so very bad?” She inquired gently, reaching forward to squeeze her friend’s hand.

Raven slumped a bit, hanging her head tiredly. “Yes. But it’s worth it. It’s worth _everything._ ”

_Not you,_ Clarke thought sadly as she pulled her in for another hug. She was afraid for Raven, that whatever burning need she heard in her friend’s tone was going to consume her. Because her mission wasn’t just for the convent, it was personal, Clarke was starting to realize, finally able to explain the resurfacing flashes of that broken girl she had seen that first night at the convent. Giving her one last affectionate squeeze, she told herself that Raven was stronger now, and had friends to look after her. She would make it through this.

“Well, now that I’ve settled your not going to murder Bellamy in his sleep, I should probably get going. It’s almost morning.”

Raven swallowed tightly before nodding, and Clarke swore she was blinking back tears.

“You need me, for anything, you know I’d come, whatever it was,” Clarke urged her. “I’d pick you first. Always.”

“What a rebel,” Raven shot back with a roll of her eyes.

With a knowing smile, because she wasn’t fooled by her nonchalance in the least, Clarke turned to go.

“Wait!”

She paused, watching Raven dart to the floor, unearthing a small bundle from one of the stones.

“You should have this. It’s of no use to me, very unfortunately.”

Clarke almost gasped when she unwrapped it, eyes falling to the black blade of the weapon gleaming in the dawning light. It was a misericord, one of Mortain’s own, which with the smallest nick would end the receiver’s life, sending his soul straight to Death’s realm without the customary three days of lingering to serve penance. It was the swiftest way to kill someone, and the most merciful, both to the body and the soul.

“Raven, are you sure?”

“No one I would need to kill here is deserving of such a peaceful end,” she practically growled.

With a firm nod, Clarke fastened the dagger to her belt, tucking it into her skirt to hide it.

“Thank you,” she said with a heartfelt smile. “May the Nine bless you, and may we meet again.”

Raven’s matching whispered farewell followed her out the door, the words and the memory of her voice cocooning Clarke’s heart in love and confidence that had her slipping back into her room with lighter steps, reassured that there was at least one person here she could always count on.

* * *

Her sense of peace lasted three days, ending with a sharp tug to her arm that jerked her away from her conversation in the great hall with Harper and Monroe.

“Where were you last night?” Bellamy hissed as he towed her out of the room and into the passageway.

“You should know,” Clarke spat back, yanking out of his grip yet continuing to walk beside him. She tried not to dwell on the way she had lay in bed the night before, listening to him scribble out notes while he sat in her room for a few hours, keeping up their pretense of involvement. The way her stomach had rolled with nerves the whole time, the way her whole body had flushed when she sensed him looking over at her, which he did quite often.

“After I left,” Bellamy said, rapidly, impatiently. “Did you go out?”

“No.”

He whipped around, staring down at her without mercy, a hardness in his gaze that hadn’t been there since their early days.

“ _No,_ ” she repeated, devastatingly firm.

After a few more seconds of fervent consideration, he sighed, visibly deflating.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, voice raw. “That was uncalled for. I just—fuck. _Fuck._ ”

He rubbed his hands over his face, sliding them up into his hair, pulling on the strands once before scrubbing down with his palms again, leaving an expression of utter defeat in their wake.

“What’s happened?” Clarke prodded in a hushed tone, aware of the passersby who were much to close for her liking.

“Follow me. I’ll explain on the way.” He took off, and she followed immediately, shaken by his panicked demeanor.

He tried to explain—something about _poison_ and _madness_ and _betrayal_ —but it wasn’t until she was standing before Lincoln that she understood.

“My gods,” she breathed, watching the formerly gentle man growl and bark, foaming at the mouth as he strained violently against the chains holding him back.

“Can you fix him?” Octavia’s shaky voice asked from behind them. “Please, you need to fix him.”

Lincoln’s wild eyes, rimmed with red, flicked between her, Bellamy, and Octavia, and his lips curled up into a snarl. Clarke stepped closer, trying not to flinch as he snapped at her, teeth bared like fangs.

“More light,” she said, hoping her voice was steady enough to keep everyone calm.

Bellamy obliged, raising a torch that had Lincoln blinking in pain at the brightness. Looking him over carefully, she took in his systems, her mind clouded with possibilities. When she finally identified the crimson tendrils radiating from a small point on his neck, though, her thoughts cleared and dread pooled in her stomach.

“Mountain vine’s bite,” she whispered. “See, the pattern spreading from that point? It was probably where they injected him. It’s harmful enough just via skin contact, but when injected straight into the bloodstream…”

She trailed off, not wanting to think of what was most likely going to happen to Lincoln. It was enough information, though, to cause Octavia to let out a harsh sob.

“No,” she whimpered. “No!” She repeated, angrily this time. “It’s not fair. It’s not _fair._ ”

“I’m so sorry, O,” Bellamy murmured, pulling the crying duchess into a tight embrace. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve had more guards posted. I should’ve known this would happen.”

“You couldn’t have,” his sister argued sadly.

“Whoever on the Council arranged this will pay. I promise you that,” he pledged.

Though his grip on Octavia stayed gentle, Clarke could see the fury descending over him, his eyes flashing dangerously even in the dim room. Tears pricked her eyes as she watched the siblings find solace in each other, even as Lincoln snarled menacingly in the background, each feral, unfamiliar sound like a needle in her heart.

“Is there anything you can do?” Octavia pleaded when she turned back around.

“I don’t know,” she answered, regretfully honest. “I’ll try, of course. And there are some people I know of who might be able to help.”

Her thoughts flicked to Jasper and Monty, faint hope rising in her.

“Thank you,” Octavia whispered, rushing forward to hug her. It took her aback, to be taken in so familiarly, but she returned the embrace, wanting to give the Duchess as much comfort as she could.

“I’ll keep this from the Council as long as possible,” Bellamy stated. “Give you the best shot at reversing this before they catch wind and want to nail down another betrothal.”

“I won’t give up on him,” Octavia said, folding her arms over her chest resolutely.

“You may not have a choice,” Clarke offered in a quiet voice. “But I’ll do my best to keep it from coming to that.”

“We both will,” Bellamy promised, his determined gaze locking with Clarke’s.

_Together_ , it seemed to say, and she smiled grimly, because she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

* * *

To her disappointment, Monty and Jasper had no immediate antidotes, but they promised to devote all their time to looking. Clarke was doing the same, reciting her lessons over and over and over, hoping to remember something. She had written a letter to Maya as well, hoping someone at the convent would have an answer, though it might come too late.

Anytime she wasn’t searching for a cure, she was at Octavia’s side, trying to keep the Duchess in good spirits. Even Bellamy had capitulated to her suggestion of continuing her fighting lessons—which she finally told him about—desperate to see his sister distracted, if only momentarily. Though during the first few sessions Octavia was not as invested as before, eventually her frustration got the better of her, and she began to pour all of her worry and anger into her fighting. She was a sight to behold, a storm of a girl trying to escape the binds holding her, a strong enough force that even Clarke couldn’t match her sometimes.

It was after one particularly rough session that the duchess asked to see Lincoln again, stubbornly, commandingly.

“It’s not safe,” Clarke argued, though her heart wasn’t really in it.

“I want to see him.” Octavia lifted her head, shoulders thrown back regally. “I need to see him.”

It was the way her voice broke on the ‘need’ that made Clarke capitulate, sneaking her across the castle towards where they were holding Lincoln. They were almost there when they ran across Diana and Tristan, and Clarke cursed as the two approached them, eyes gleaming with disapproval and greedy interest, respectively.

“Where are the rest of your ladies, Your Grace?” Diana snapped, her disapproval of Clarke as blatant as ever.

“In my chambers, where you ordered them to stay, no doubt,” Octavia shot back with a fierce smile that only barely masked her anxiety.

Diana pursed her lips in disapproval, which satisfied Clarke, but then Tristan spoke and her discomfort grew again.

“Well, then it is fortunate you have us to escort you back safely,” the count gloated.

He offered his hand, but Octavia didn’t move a muscle, her jaw working much like her brother’s did when resisting saying something he would probably later regret. The resemblance almost made Clarke smile.

“Your Grace, don’t be rude,” Diana chided, but still the Duchess continued to stare down Tristan, whose expression was growing darker by the minute.

Clarke was about to say something—what, she didn’t know, but anything to keep Octavia away from them—when she felt a hot tug on her insides, and the flicker of a soul called to her from the corner of her eye.

_Go_. _Follow._

Before she knew it, she was nudging Octavia forward, and Tristan scooped the Duchess’s hand up immediately. Clarke sent Octavia an apologetic look, but she had never felt herself called to a living soul like this before. She had to find out why.

“I’ll meet you back at your chambers,” she said, dropping into a curtsy. “Madame Diana can chaperone you two just fine.”

With a pang of regret, she left a disgruntled Octavia behind, racing through the corridors as she tried to follow the soul. Her heart pounded in anticipation as she realized she was approaching Lincoln’s chambers. When she heard his agitated roar and the shuffle of two pairs of feet from behind the door, she burst inside, already drawing her knives.

It was a good thing she was prepared, because the intruder—a lumbering nobody of a man with bland features and blank eyes—lashed out at her, clearly a skilled fighter. Clarke steeled herself as she engaged him, parrying his strikes with moderate effort. Soon she was able to flip on the offensive, however, and with less than a dozen moves, she was sliding her blade cleanly into the man’s throat, blood spurting out and spattering her front.

She cried out when a searing pain slashed across her shoulder blade. Spinning around, she barely had time to pull her knife out of her target’s neck to block the newly arrived second attacker. Feeling her muscles strain underneath the weight he bore down on her, she let out a strangled yell as she collapsed purposefully, rolling out of the way. Clarke ignored the wetness soaking into the back of her dress as she lunged forward, desperate to dispatch this other man before her wound worsened.

It was a hard fight, and a close one, but when she got at his back and jammed one of her pins straight into his spine, she let out a sigh of relief. The now dead man thumped to the floor, and Clarke followed him, weak and exhausted. She lay there next to the two bodies, sucking in pained, rasping breaths, for how long, she didn’t know. Lincoln continued to rage at the back of the room, but she could barely hear him. The adrenaline rushing in her ears was too loud, muffling everything else except her own breathing and her own heartbeat.

It was only when her head began to spin that she knew she needed to get up. She was losing too much blood.  

With a whimper, she struggled to her feet before going to the second body, tugging off his mostly clean cloak, and wrapping it around her. It was the best she could do to hide her stained clothing at the moment. Slow, shuffling steps were also the best she could do to get herself back to her rooms, barely managing to hide her pain from the messenger boy she snagged aside to fetch Bellamy.

While she waited for him, she remained standing, afraid that if she sat down, she would pass out. Gritting her teeth, because the convent had prepared her for worse than this, she breathed through the pain, focusing on the whorls and knots in the door until it swung open and Bellamy entered.

“Here,” she said, offering him the needle and thread she had retrieved when she first returned. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

Bellamy snorted but took the tools anyways. “Didn’t I already pay an exorbitant amount of money for a tailor for you?”

Clarke grimaced, turning and dropping her cloak.

She shivered at the chilly air sweeping across the blood-dampened skin of her partially exposed back, and maybe also a little bit at the shocked sound that escaped Bellamy.

“ _Clarke._ ”

“I can’t reach it,” she said. “I need you to stitch it up.”

Both pain and pleasure shot through her when she felt his fingers just barely brush against the tender skin adjacent to the wound.

“What happened?” He asked in a tight voice as he continued to probe the cut, his tenderness so foreign compared to the firm, no-nonsense approach of the convent’s nurses.

Clarke hissed as he hit a particularly sore spot. “I got a feeling, and it led me to Lincoln. Someone was trying to kill him, so I took care of it. Turns out there was a second man I didn’t see, but I managed to take him out too.”

His hand withdrew, and uncertainty filled her. “I had to,” she said. “They were going to kill Lincoln, and me. I was protecting us.”

The warm press of Bellamy’s palm fell on her other shoulder blade. “You did good, Clarke,” he whispered, the stroke of his thumb against her spine causing her to shiver again, but this time her skin was warm, so very warm. “Now let’s get you cleaned up.”

With hands bracketing her sides, he moved her to the bed, seating her on the edge. She stared at the mussed sheets instead of his tense, quiet form as he crossed the room to get a cloth and wet it with water from the pitcher on her table.

Even the sheets couldn’t hold her attention though, once he started stitching. The mix of pain from the needle sliding in and out of her raw flesh and the gentle way Bellamy let the thread do its work made her vision blur, her head spin. She lost count of the stitches, but then with one last painful tug, he finished off sewing her up. His hot breath fluttered on her back as he bit off the thread, followed by his finger running along the stitches as a last check that they were holding.

“Thanks,” she said, but his hands still ghosted over her skin, and without thinking, she leaned back, his fingertips sliding against her ribs. The contact was so sudden, and so comforting, familiar in a way that should not be to a handmaiden of Mortain, that Clarke startled, launching off the bed as she spun around to face him. Her hands flew to her loose bodice, clutching it to her chest as her eyes locked on his.

She couldn’t have made a worse mistake, looking at Bellamy.

He wasn’t hiding it anymore, his want for her. She saw it in his searching, heated gaze, the one that ran all over her, that she felt _touch_ her, because Bellamy could do that. He just could look at her, and it was as if nothing stood between them anymore: no pretenses, no lies, no loyalties or obligations. With one glance, he stripped her down, until she was just a girl who wanted too.

He stood, and she took a step back.

He stopped, and she continued moving away, her jaw clenching when her back hit the cold stone wall behind her.

She watched his hand twitch at his side, watched him contemplate taking a step back. So she tipped her chin up, raising her eyebrows in challenge.

His chest expanded, the fire in his eyes flaring, and he moved again, each step slow, steady, reassuring. Clarke closed her eyes, hands clenching into the fabric of her dress, contemplating letting it fall to the ground. He was so close, she could feel his heat right there, like flames licking her skin, a bonfire ready to engulf her.

The rustle of her bodice and skirt collapsing to the floor, leaving her in only her chemise, was drowned out by his sharp inhale. The needy sound drew all the breath from her lungs, as if he couldn’t get enough and had to take some from her. Fire was greedy that way. She smiled at the thought.

Gentle fingers grazed against her lips, and she shivered.

“Clarke?”

She answered using her hands: one wrapping around his fingers to guide them around to her lower back and flattening his palm there, the other one sliding around the back of his neck, bringing his head down so she could claim his mouth in a heady, heated kiss.

He consumed her, drawing her in with strong arms, safe arms. When his tongue slid along the seal of her lips, she hummed, opening for him. Her head arched back, and he followed, seeking her as she let herself get lost under his caressing hands. When her arms locked around his neck, bringing them even closer, his leg pressed against her knees, parting them. She groaned into his mouth as they slammed back into the wall. At the impact, he slowed them down, breaking away with ragged breaths interrupted by shorter, softer kisses until he just kept his mouth hovering above hers, his breath hot on her lips, his forehead pressed tightly against hers.

“Clarke,” he whispered, and her throat dried up, because the way he said her name was sacrilegious. It was a wasted prayer, spent recklessly on a false deity, and neither of them could afford to anger the gods at the moment.

So she thought about pulling away, but his heat felt too good, and she needed too strongly. Instead, she let her fingers play across his cheeks, her eyes blinking slowly open to meet his stare, the raw uncertainty dancing behind his blown-out pupils taking her aback.

A knock sounded at the door, and then he wasn’t there anymore. She could breathe easier, but she felt hungry, empty. Trying to refocus, she put her dress back on, though it didn’t do much good, damaged as it was. When the quiet conversation cut off, and the door closed, Clarke swallowed and faced Bellamy. No use hiding from him now.

“A message from your contacts in the city,” he murmured softly, though his eyes narrowed, because she still wouldn’t tell him who they—Jasper and Monty—were.

“And?”

“Nothing new.”

“Damn.” Clarke dropped her head back to stare at the ceiling and blew out a breath. “That reminds me. I need to take care of the bodies. They’re still with Lincoln.”

“I’ll do it,” he replied brusquely, and when she snapped her gaze back to him, his hand was already on the door handle. “You should change, and rest.”

“Bellamy—” she called out, but he was already gone.

She wanted to tell him it was useless to rest, the adrenaline from her earlier fight and their kisses still coursing through her. Besides, the sun had only begun to set. For a while she paced the room to wear herself, once grabbing her crossbow, determined to ride out into the forest, just for something to do. The heavy weight of the weapon in her hand pulled at her stitches, making her hiss as the pain.

If she went out now, in her condition, there was no telling what permanent damage she would do to her shoulder. So instead she flopped down on her bed, screaming into her pillow in frustration. Twisting around, she glared at the canopy above her bed, eyes following the lines of thread, over and over and over, until exhaustion finally claimed her.

* * *

 

It was dark when she awoke next, gasping as she sat up, senses all on alert. The scuff of boots against stone made her tense, and her gaze flew to the strip of yellow-orange light from the hallway flickering under her door. Someone was standing outside, and her heart leapt when she thought she heard the brush of knuckles against the door. With blood rushing in her ears, she waited, but the feet stayed where they were for just a few more seconds before walking away.

Her stomach twisted, because for the first time in a while, Bellamy was avoiding her, though she could still feel the warmth of his hands clutching her waist, the whisper of his lips ghosting over her skin.

Grimacing at the door, she curled back up in bed, unhappiness curdling in her gut.

_If that’s how it’s going to be_ , she thought, closing her eyes as her throat clenched, _then so be it._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time for Clarke to decide where her loyalties lie. That question isn’t as hard to answer as it once was though, and as it turns out, she may be gaining quite a bit more than she is losing once she chooses.

Clarke gritted her teeth as she watched the last of Tristan’s knives land square in the bulls-eye. The gloating roar of approval from his men frayed her nerves, and the paling of his opponent’s face tugged at her pity. It would be no surprise if the man, who was no doubt now regretting his decision to challenge Lord Forestier, would wake up tomorrow with one less limb. Forestier had a mean streak, and just winning the competition would not be enough for him, or so Clarke had heard. Humiliation and pain had to ensue as well.

Wincing at Forestier’s overly forceful clap to the loser’s shoulder, she considered leaving the competition yards. With Bellamy avoiding her, and she avoiding him, for nearly a week, though, she needed something productive to do. Indra had finally responded to her missive, very displeased with her progress and even more convinced that she was missing something when it came to Blake. About to turn around, Clarke stopped at seeing a flash of purple fabric and brunette hair.

 _Mortain’s brow_ , she breathed, striding forward to halt the duchess, who was heading for Forestier with a scowl on her face. It was the same one she wore when Clarke said she was not ready to advance to the next level of her training.

“Do not,” Clarke breathed in her ear as she caught Octavia just a few rows from the front of the crowd. “Not here, in front of everyone. He will not react kindly to a challenge from you.”

“You said yourself I’m as good as anyone at the convent by now,” Octavia argued harshly. “And someone needs to put him in his place.”

“Not you!”

Suddenly the back of Clarke’s neck prickled, and she realized the people around them had drawn away.

“Your Grace,” Tristan drawled, dropping into a bow that was just a millimeter short of appropriate. Octavia’s grimace showed that she recognized the slight. “I am honored that you’ve come to see me practice.”

“You’ve shown—very adequate skill, from what I can see,” she replied. “It has been interesting to watch the events this afternoon.”

Clarke battled both annoyance, because Octavia had no restraint, and fear, seeing Tristan’s eyes darken at the jibe.

“You suggest you are well acquainted with weaponry techniques?” Forestier challenged, looming over them.

“I have been trained by the best,” Octavia challenged, removing Clarke’s clawing fingers from her arm as she stepped forward, head tipped up to glare at the lord.

Tristan let out a rough laugh, walking backwards with his arms spread out. “Then by all means, Your Grace, I would love to see you in action.” 

Before Clarke could stop her, the duchess strode forward. The crowd broke out into shocked whispers when Octavia unsheathed two knives from under her sleeves, and another from her boot.

“Best out of three?” She taunted, and all amusement left Tristan’s face.

“Ladies first,” Tristan said, the words dripping with sarcasm.

Bellamy was going to lose his mind when he heard about this. Clarke’s own concern for Octavia grew, but as she stepped forward, a strong hand clamped down on her shoulder.

“Interfering would only make it worse for her,” Kane whispered into her ear.

“Worse than this?” Clarke hissed, staring up at his grim expression. “Than the duchess challenging one of the most dangerous and vindictive men at court to a competition that will probably not turn out in his favor, and will wound his pride?”

Calculation and then curiosity flickered in Kane’s dark eyes. “You think she will win.”

“She is excellent,” Clarke bit out, looking away. Octavia was lining up, and then her first knife flew, landing just outside the bulls-eye.

“And how did Her Grace come to be so good at this?” Kane muttered.

She ignored the tightening of his grip on her arm. “How should I know?”

The thud of Octavia’s second knife landing just as well as the first made Clarke’s heart skip a beat. Kane whistled in admiration, but it was drowned out by the excited shouts of the crowd.

“You two are as thick as thieves lately.”

“Spying on the duchess, Kane?”

“Somebody needs to protect her.”

Clarke couldn’t help but give a curt nod in agreement, especially as a sick feeling rose up in her stomach when the duchess’s third knife landed dead center in the target. As good of a mark as Tristan was, he would actually have to work to beat his opponent now.

“It seems I keep underestimating you both, Mademoiselle Griffin,” Kane said before sliding away, but Clarke couldn’t chase after him, instead focused on the way Tristan was standing much too close to the duchess.

“I will not win by default,” Octavia proclaimed, her voice hard and loud.

“I am satisfied by your skill, Duchess. That is why I am forfeiting this match,” Tristan said, his voice smug but strained.

“Coward,” Octavia accused, a dangerous gleam in her eye. “How can you consider yourself capable of defending this country as its Duke if you can’t even compete against me?”

“Your Grace,” Tristan growled. Clarke knew his patience was just about to snap, and she raced towards them. Just as she reached Octavia’s side—with Tristan’s guards tensing at her approach—a voice called out.

“Lord Forestier!”

Everyone in the edgy crowd, including Clarke, turned to see Chancellor Wallace striding forward.

“I am so sorry to interrupt,” he said in a low voice, reaching out to wrap Octavia’s arm around his own. “But the duchess is needed by the Council at the moment. We have been looking for her everywhere. I hate to deprive you of her company, but I gather you will have plenty of opportunities to enjoy it, very soon.”

Octavia looked fit to be tied at the insinuation of Forestier’s suit basically being assured as successful, but Clarke just felt relief, because Tristan’s attitude was slowly transitioning from furious to satisfied. Whether Wallace was telling the truth or not, she didn’t care, as long as it got them far away from this field and the vicious man before them.

Not one of them said a word the entire way back to the castle. Octavia fumed, Wallace remained stoic, and Clarke lost herself in her thoughts. Reluctantly, she realized that she would have to tell Bellamy about the reference to Forestier’s suit being pushed for approval by the Council, and he would have to work faster to get the Holy Emperor to respond to his inquiry regarding a possible proxy marriage to Octavia.

 _Anyone but Tristan,_ she pleaded, hoping that just this once, Mortain was listening to her.

She tried to slip away when they reached the Duchess’s quarters, but Wallace caught her wrist in an iron grip, the band of his cold, heavy ring pressing into her skin almost painfully.

“I’m guessing you wanted to speak with me,” she commented dryly as he pulled her into a deserted stairwell. He made sure to stand one step above her, craning his neck down to meet her gaze with a frown, and she didn’t much appreciate his attempt at intimidation. Still, the conversation would be briefer if she let him posture.

“I just wanted to reiterate how important your mission is here at court,” he said, so slowly that it was patronizing. “How important it is for you to bring Blake to justice.”

“You mean the traitor. Because no one, least of all I, have confirmed that Blake is betraying the duchess.”

“Do you not trust your superiors?”

“I do,” Clarke snapped, folding her arms across her chest.

“And has Indra not communicated her suspicions to you?”

“She has.”

“And you disagree with them?”

The dubious, almost pitying tone he took made anger rise in her chest. “They’re just suspicions! And neither she nor the Seeress are here, but I am, and I do not think Bellamy is guilty.”

“So you understand Mortain and his will in full now? You, and you alone?”

“I understand that it is none of a politician’s business to question a novitiate of Mortain!”

“I understand death and his mercilessness better than you think,” Wallace rumbled, his pained, sharp voice echoing off the cold stones of the cavernous stairwell.

A prickling sensation spread across the back of her neck and shoulders. “Let me do my job, Chancellor, and just continued to do yours,” Clarke warned.

The tingling peaked, and for a split second, she considered looking for Mortain’s mark on Wallace. The knowledge that Indra trusted him, though, rushed the thought from her mind.

“Good day, chancellor,” she offered through gritted teeth, pushing past him to walk up the steps and back outside before she said something she would very much regret.

* * *

 Her unease and anger only grew the farther she walked, and not even a furious horseback ride across the hills surrounding the castle soothed her. She skipped dinner, opting to pace in her room, starting no less than three different letters to Indra defending Bellamy Blake. They all ended up in the fire though, because the abbess saw everything, knew everything, and the second she read Clarke’s notes, she would know that Bellamy was no longer just a target to her.

“Damn,” she muttered, hands fisting into her skirts. “Damn, damn, damn.”

Before she knew it, she was racing through the dusky castle halls and bursting into Bellamy’s study. He had been sitting in a large chair reading, but her entrance startled him. Standing, he tossed the book—he was still working on the same one since she had arrived, some great tome about ancient civilizations—onto the seat behind him, striding forward to meet her halfway.

“What is it?” He demanded, his hands cupping her shoulders; it unsettled her how his touch comforted her and made her skin prickle at the same time. “What’s wrong?”

“Have you ever broken an oath?”

Surprise flitted across his face, followed by confusion and then slight annoyance. It mirrored her own churning emotions perfectly, because of all the questions she needed answers to— _have you found a way to stop Tristan, will Lincoln be cured, where do things stand between us_ —that was not one she had planned to ask. It seems Wallace’s whispers had stuck with her after all, like stubborn splinters she couldn’t manage to extract from her mind.

“I’m a politician,” Bellamy replied dryly, stepping away. “We’re notorious for not keeping our promises.”

“Not a promise. An oath. A god-sworn oath.”

“Why do you care?”

She stuck out her jaw, hoping her took her silence for stubbornness, and not the uncertainty that it really was.

He considered her carefully for a long moment, so long that she wasn’t sure if it was the intensity of his stare or her position in front of the fire that had her cheeks heating.

“When Octavia was six, someone tried to kill her.” He paused, jaw clenching. “My mother had done her best to keep my sister’s existence a secret from court, but clearly someone knew, and they wanted us gone. In the middle of the night, she roused us from bed, tried to hide us under the floor. It was too late, though, and the few guards she bribed to work for us were not enough. My mother put a sword in my hand, and repeated what she had told me at Octavia’s birth: your sister, your responsibility. She wanted me to fight, to defend my sister, but even that young, I knew it would be no use. Every sense I had was telling me to run, to flee, that as long as we escaped the castle, we would be safe. Except I was already sworn to Saint Camulos, and I had a responsibility, as a solider, not a brother, to the patron saint of war, to stand and fight. But a saint I had never seen or heard from was nothing to me, and my sister was everything. I chose her. I chose to run, and it saved her life, all of our lives. So yes, I have broken a god-sworn oath, but I don’t regret it, never have. I would do it again, if it would save Octavia.”

He was breathing so heavily by the end of his speech that Clarke couldn’t help but reach out to take his hand in hers.

“Alright,” she murmured, squeezing his fingers. “It’s alright.”

He choked out a laugh, looking up at the ceiling. “Gods Clarke,” he muttered, before tugging her to him suddenly.

Startled, she tried to pull away, but his strong hands held fast on her elbows, keeping her close.

“You can’t will this away, you know,” he said quietly, knocking his forehead against hers.

“Will what away?” She asked with deliberate, feigned ignorance. He smiled, because it didn’t suit her, and they both knew it.

“This,” he emphasized as he brushed his lips against hers. “Us.”

“Try me,” she grumbled, but his heat and her want kept her firmly in the circle of his arms. With his mouth only a breath away, it wasn’t long before she was arching up, kissing him, bending her body against his as he surrounded her even more fully than before.

“I need to talk to you,” she gasped as he laid wet kisses and left soft bites down her neck.

“Really,” he whispered into the hollow of her throat.

“Y-yes,” she stuttered as his fingers grazed over the ties at the back of her dress.

“ _Really_.”

With a low whimper and much too much reluctance, she pulled away, frowning at him. “I’m serious.”

“When are you not?” He sighed, but there was fondness in his tone.

Rolling her eyes in protest, she straightened her shoulders and started explaining what she had heard from Wallace in regards to Forestier, as well the odd energy she had picked up on during her private conversation with the chancellor.

“He should not be this involved in the convent’s work,” she mused, fingers drumming against the wooden table they had settled around.

“Wallace has been on the Council longer than anybody, and he has always made decisions that are good for Octavia, not just the dukedom,” he argued immediately. “He has no reason to betray her.”

“But if he did have reason—would he be capable of it?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t be sure of anything, not anymore.” Bellamy scrubbed a hand over her face, then up into his hair, leaving it there, twisted tightly into his dark curls.

 _You can be sure of me_.

The words bubbled up, but Clarke couldn’t bring her lips to part and allow the damning admission escape. Instead, she let silence to descend, with only the occasional crack of a burning log in the fireplace interrupting. Restless, she eventually took out her knife and sharpening stone, and Bellamy turned back to his book—he was halfway through it now. They spent the rest of the night quietly but together, and Clarke never even realized that she had dozed off, not until strong arms slipping under her, jostling her awake.

“Put me down,” she mumbled, drawing a soft chuckle from Bellamy.

“I’m not going to drop you.”

“I should go back to my room.”

He didn’t stop walking though, and then she was deposited onto what has presumably his bed.

“Sleep,” he whispered, covering her in a blanket. “One night here won’t hurt. No one will think the wiser; you’re supposed to be my mistress, after all.”

Clarke vaguely wondered where he was going to sleep before her eyelids fluttered shut again. 

* * *

 

She woke with strong arms around her waist and a deep voice groaning in her ear as the door to the room slammed open.

“I will not marry him!” Octavia shouted, bursting inside.

Clarke shot upright, grimacing as she accidentally elbowed Bellamy in the stomach when she reached for her absent knife.

“Good morning,” he grumbled, sitting up and straightening his shirt, the same one from yesterday.

The duchess only raised her eyebrows slightly at the sight of them on top of the covers together before she continued. “Have you heard? Have you seen it?”

“Heard what?” Clarke asked at the same time as Bellamy barked, “Seen what?”

“Forestier has a betrothal agreement in his possession, one that I apparently signed.”

Bellamy swore colorfully, scrambling to stand.

“The Council can’t honor it,” Clarke protested, clambering out of bed just as hurriedly.

“Oh, they can, or so Anya told me this morning,” Octavia replied bitterly. “I almost throttled her when she said so.”

“We don’t need any more problems, O. Or any more deaths at court. Leave the violence to Clarke.”

Pausing in looking for her shoes, Clarke almost laughed, because he said it so nonchalantly. “He’s right, you know.”

“What’s the use of me learning to fight, if I never get to use it!” Octavia shouted, throwing her hands up in the air.

Bellamy shot a dark look at Clarke, one that said they would be talking about that little admission later. She just glared back at him, pursing her lips defiantly.

“I won’t marry him, Bell. It’s forged. I never signed that document, or anything like it. They can’t make me, and I won’t do it. I would never marry him, ever, and I wouldn’t even consider marrying anyone else, not while Lincoln is alive.”

The duchess looked to Clarke hopefully then, expecting news. Clarke’s chest pinched as she replied, “I’m so sorry, Your Grace. Monty and Jasper are trying everything, but they haven’t made much progress. The poison is a cunning one. One wrong try, and it could go south.”

Octavia let out a strangled noise, trying and failing to hold back her frustration and sorrow.

“We’ll figure this out,” Bellamy offered, shrugging on his coat.

“I’ll slit Tristan’s throat before I would ever marry him,” Octavia growled.

“Not if I do it first,” Clarke muttered in agreement, earning a grim smile from the duchess, and a half-exasperated, half-approving look from Bellamy.

“It won’t come to that,” he vowed.

Octavia set her jaw tightly before speaking. “You promise?”

Clarke watched with her heart in her throat as Bellamy took Octavia’s trembling hands in his own.

“He won’t get anywhere near you. I swear it.”

He pressed a hard kiss to her forehead, and the duchess wilted a little, her thin frame collapsing against his bulky one. Clarke’s eyes pricked with tears, sincerely hoping that Bellamy’s words would prove to be more than an empty, desperate promise. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As danger encroaches, more than one life is put at risk in the castle. Life isn't the only thing that's on the line, either, as Clarke throws herself into something with Bellamy that proves to be worth more than life, or death, could ever be to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is where the mature rating comes into play, folks ;)

Clarke thought she had acclimated to the constant thrum of anxiety and fear in her pulse that living at court had created. Then, on her way to meet Octavia to brainstorm yet another strategy for invalidating Tristan’s proposal, she received a note from Raven. Her breath caught when her eyes fell on the tiny black bird etched into the corner of the folded parchment, which had been slipped into her pocket in passing. Communicating, even in secret like this, was dangerous for both of them, given Tristan’s newest power play and increased determination to have the duchy, at any cost.

Stealing away into a secluded corner, Clarke’s hands trembled as she opened the note, throat closing up as she read Raven’s frantic, dire warning.

_Third-floor corridor, west wing. She needs you. Now._

Without hesitation, Clarke took off at a run, ignoring the wide-eyed stares of the people she passed in the halls. She hitched up her skirts, not daring to risk tripping even if her concealed weapons were now in danger of being exposed to prying eyes. All she could think of was Octavia.

She was a turn away when she heard the duchess’s sharp, angry cry. Clarke skidded around the corner, unsheathing a dagger and vehemently wishing she had her crossbow with her. Her fear turned to fury when she saw Tristan and Octavia locked in battle, the towering man bearing down on the duchess with a jagged knife. She had her own blades crossed and holding off his, her face red with exertion. She grunted, the count’s dagger dropped down another inch, and then Clarke flew forward. She didn’t care if he wasn’t marqued by Mortain. He was trying to kill the duchess, which meant he had to die. So with a cry of her own, she slashed at Tristan’s shoulder, managing to inflict a deep wound before he whipped around and she had to stumble back.

“ _You_ ,” he seethed, eyes dark and dangerous. “Always in the way. Not for much longer though.”

Grinning cruelly, he advanced, but she was too quick for him, spinning out of the way before striking again, getting closer to his gut but still not quite close enough. As Tristan raged towards her, she ducked then slammed her foot into his knee, knocking him off-balance. He grunted as he crashed into the corridor wall, and Clarke used the moment to retrieve her small throwing knives, launching them at her opponent. Two landed in his shoulder, and he let out a cry of pain.

Too quick for her to register, he lashed out, backhanding her. Seeing stars, she fell to the ground, expecting a swiftly following fatal blow, but it never came. As she blinked away black spots from her vision, she registered Octavia with her knife pressed tightly against Tristan’s neck.

“I hear the guards coming. Do you?” She hissed. “They heard the fight, and now everyone will know what you’ve done.”

Clarke groaned as Tristan managed to twist from Octavia’s solid but still unpracticed grip, snarling at the two of them before fleeing. The duchess started after him, only stopping when she realized Clarke wasn’t following.

By the time Octavia rushed back to her side, she had managed to stumble upright again.

“Are you alright?” She asked hurriedly, gripping the duchess’s forearms in concern.

“I’m—“ Octavia swallowed, pride warring with distress in her green eyes.

“You’re alright,” Clarke finished for her. Her hands slid back to circle the duchess’s wrists lightly, feeling her racing pulse and willing it to slow. “You’re safe.”

“I can’t believe he tried to kill me,” she choked out angrily. “He said he was done being patient, that with me out of the way, he could make a claim to the duchy immediately, no need for a betrothal. It was just faster, he said, nothing personal.”

“He’s gone. They’ll catch him.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

Clarke watched the duchess’s tears spill over as the venom-filled words left her lips, and then she pulled her into a hug, tight and reassuring, letting Octavia know that she really was safe. The duchess clutched her back in equal ferocity and concern. Though reluctant to pull away, Clarke knew the guards would be on them any second. Then they would never get the duchess to a place where she could process this in private, something she sorely deserved at the moment.

So with a hurried whisper, she coaxed Octavia down the hall, using some of the back passageways to return them to the duchess’s quarters without being seen. No one needed to witness her tear-streaked face, nor her furious mutterings of revenge, not at the moment. There would be plenty of time for her to reveal Tristan’s treachery later, when she was calmer, stronger. He would be far too slippery to catch even if they pursued immediately, she figured, though letting him slip through her fingers still was a bitter pill to swallow.

“Don’t tell Bellamy,” Octavia pleaded after Clarke had helped her bathe, redress, and then slip into bed, her ladies posted at the door with strict instructions not to leave or let anyone enter without the duchess’s explicit permission. “I should be the one to tell him about it. I need to be the one.”

Clarke nodded, wishing she could make this easier for the both of them.

 _If you had taken out Tristan earlier, you could have_ , a nagging voice whispered in her mind.

She hadn’t seen the marque on him, not even after today, and rage welled up in her. After leaving the duchess in good hands, she stormed back to her room, slamming the door behind her. With angry grunts, she launched her knives one after another into the wooden bedpost.

One for Tristan and his violent greed.

One for the rest of their enemies, who were too numerous to count.

One for the convent, and their blindness to reality.

And last, one for Mortain, who was not the god she thought he was, seemingly refusing to bring down judgment on those who deserved it, like she had been raised to think he would.

As she stared blankly out the window, her anger did not subside as the daylight dimmed. It only grew into a hotter flame that rivaled those of the torches that flared to life in the courtyard below, tiny pinpricks of orange against the blackness outside. Hours passed, and it almost surprised Clarke when she finally noticed the dark sky had lightened to a navy blue.

When her door creaked open, and Bellamy slipped in, jaw clenched and murder in his eyes, she decided finally to stow her fury away. His took precedence, at the moment; she would continue to sort hers out later, when she was alone again.

Striding forward, Clarke collided with him, arms banding around his heaving chest without hesitation. As she held Bellamy tightly, feeling relieved when he embraced her back, she breathed him in, relishing the fact that he smelled like leather and paper and nothing like blood.

“She told me I could leave, that she felt safe again by the time she went to bed. But I couldn’t leave her, not when he almost killed her today. I couldn’t,” he seethed quietly, almost vibrating with tension.

“I know,” Clarke murmured. “I know.”

“She sent me away when she woke and saw me still there just now. I didn’t want to, especially after finding out Madame Diana was helping him. Her own governess betrayed her then fled with the traitor that tried to kill her. She shouldn’t be alone right now!”

“It’s not about what you want though. She might need space.”

Bellamy’s hands fisted into the fabric of her dress, and Clarke wished she could erase his uncertainty.

“She’s alive, Bellamy. And now there is no way the Council will let her marry Tristan. He committed treason today.”

“I don’t trust the Council!”

“Then trust me,” she said sharply, pulling back to look at him unflinchingly. “If they won’t issue his death warrant, I will. I am the hand of death, and justice _will_ be served, whether Mortain blesses my blade or not.”

Bellamy stared at her with wide eyes as her sharp proclamation rang out in the dewy dawn air. He sucked in one shaky breath, then two, and then his head was leaning down, his mouth seeking hers hastily. Heat seared through her at the greedy contact, and she clasped his face between her hands, parting her lips immediately. Bellamy groaned as she deepened the kiss, his hands sliding desperately along the laces at the back of her dress.

His shirt, her skirt, his belt, her stays—they all fell to the floor with soft rustles. Too impatient to remove the rest, they collapsed onto the bed, and Clarke didn’t even mind the thin barrier of cloth still between them, because it was enough to enjoy Bellamy’s warm weight pressing her into the mattress. She could feel his racing heartbeat, and no doubt he could feel hers as his mouth grazed over the pulse point on her neck, hot and wet and taking her breath away.

It was only when their hands slid under hems that the heat cooled to a slow burn, both of them drawing back for air. His fingers dug into the skin at her hips, and hers toyed with the laces of his breeches, pausing, suspended in a moment of asking: _are you ready? Am I?_

Her own hesitation was reflected in his gaze, despite the want blowing his pupils wide and dark. Clarke arched her head back while her thoughts raced and his grip loosed. She wanted this, it, _them_ , but she wanted it without the shadow of danger and tragedy looming over them.

Still, when he began to shift up, off of her, she gripped his sides and pulled him back down. That shadow might never lift for them; it might even grow darker. Mortain might even come for one, if not both of them, and so she decided. This might not be exactly how she wanted it to go, but if there was anything life at the convent had taught her, it was to take life as it came, not as she wished it could be.

“Stay,” she murmured. “Please, stay.”

His response was to shift up the bed, twisting onto his back. He pulled her with him, hands roaming with deliberate slowness. Straddling him, Clarke resumed undoing his breeches, and he rucked up the chemise past her hips. When she freed his erection, she gripped it in her hand, and he groaned at the pressure.

Before she could do anything more, Bellamy suddenly flipped them again, mouth traveling impatiently down her neck, her collarbone, sucking at her breasts through the thin cloth of her underthings. The wet rasp of the fabric and heat of his mouth against her nipples had her gasping in delight. He toyed with her, making her squirm and gasp. Her legs wrapped around him, squeezing, causing him to grind into her with a moan. When he finally started to move lower, she felt his kisses come with smiles. Nipping and caressing, Bellamy finally nosed the creases at her hips.

“This okay?” He rasped. Clarke could hear the desire in his voice, and it sent a pulse of sharp heat through her.

“Yes,” she breathed, though barely. The anticipation was coiling her insides into pleasantly painful knots. “Yes, I’m okay.”

With a gentle kiss, he resumed his descent until his mouth was at the inside of her thighs, then right between them. She felt his hot breath against her; her hands fisted into the sheets as he finally licked up her folds. A moan escaped her when he pressed his tongue against her clit, sending shockwaves of warmth across her skin. Bellamy continued teasing her, tasting her, bringing her to the brink.

“Bellamy,” she moaned, and he hummed encouragingly against her.

Soon enough he was slipping a finger, then two, inside her wet heat, stroking her insistently, confidently. Her chest heaved as low whines slipped through her lips, her hips rocking just off beat with his motions because he was driving her past the point of control. He sped up, sensing how close she was, and then when he placed his mouth just right, she shattered with a sharp cry.

In a glowing haze, Clarke let herself melt into the mattress as he coaxed her through the aftershocks, slowly kissing his way back up her body.

“More,” she murmured as she tugged his head up to hers. She smiled, kissing him as his weight pressed down, his cock hot and hard against her.

“You sure?” He whispered in between kisses. “Have you—“

“Yes,” she said against his cheek, trusting him with this. “I have.”

Bellamy pulled back a little bit, curious.

She sighed, answering the unspoken question. “It wasn’t for a mission or anything like that. And the convent doesn’t require us to have sexual experience to go into the field, or to even suggest that we have it. We learn to fake attraction, how to weave a seduction without involving anything physical beyond what we are willing to do. But I was willing to—“

“To use sex?”

“I’m not using you,” she said hurriedly, and Bellamy cut her off with a reassuring kiss.

“I know.”

After beat of staring at him, and him crooking a smile at her, she continued, “I learned from the girls at the convent first. And that hands-on experience was plenty informative. And very enjoyable,” she added on pointedly.

Bellamy chuckled, nosing her cheek. “Girls are very enjoyable.”

She snorted. “But I wanted to see the other side. For my missions, and well, to see if I like men they way I like women. I do, for reference.”

“Noted.”

Clarke wrinkled her nose at the humor in his voice. There was fondness and acceptance there too, so before long she was drawing their mouths together again. Slowly, she kissed him, vowing to whichever of the Nine Old Gods were listening that she was going to remember every moment of this, every touch and taste, so that if Mortain did claim her, she would know enough of Bellamy to sustain her beyond this life.

Their slow pace didn’t last for long. Clarke arched up into him, and he licked into her mouth, hands gripping at barely exposed skin. As their frenzy grew, he ground against her, and but despite their greediness, he was careful when he slid into her wet heat. They breathed heavily, together, Clarke thrilled with how full she felt. Still, when he began to move, it was a powerful relief. Her hips jerked in response, startling rough sounds out of both of them. Again, they started slow, building towards something frantic and heady. He brought her high again, this time with the rock of his hips, and she did the same with her own. Lips touched lips, and skin, and hair; they were messy and sticky and too desperate for one another to fall into a perfectly matching pace. Still, Clarke lost herself in him, in the way he grunted roughly into her ear, the way each of his thrusts sent her spiraling with need.

Then with her own fingers pressed to her clit and a few more strong snaps of his hips, she was calling his name and tumbling over the edge. As she rode out the waves of pleasure, her other fingers digging into his back, Bellamy let out one more groan and pulsed into her, following right behind. Then he collapsed onto her, and neither of them moved for a minute, struggling to breathe.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, gasping a bit when he pulled out. He didn’t go far, though, staying right on top of her. They smelled of musk and something sweeter, and she absently reached up to run her hand through his damp hair.

“Clarke,” he whispered.

After a moment, she looked at him. They were nose to nose. His dark eyes shone with fierceness and need, and her pulse skipped as she felt the same emotions swell in her own chest.

“I can’t lose you,” she croaked, brushing curls off his forehead. “You know that right?”

“You won’t.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“You _won’t_.”

She tried to argue, but instead of parting, her lips reached up to give him a soft kiss on his cheek.

“Even if I do, lose you, we’ll meet again,” she reasoned. “I’ll make Mortain swear it to me.”

“How about we figure that out later?” Bellamy offered in compromise as he gently shifted them so they were lying on their sides, still wrapped up in each other.

Clarke tucked her head under his chin, fighting exhaustion and the creeping feeling that he was going to slip right through her fingers sometime soon. Then she yawned, eyes fluttering closed. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The last thing she heard before drifting off into sleep was his quiet chuckle. 

* * *

The following days didn’t leave much time for them to figure anything out, though, only quick kisses in alcoves and falling into bed, too tired to do anything but curl into each other, already half-asleep. The Council had been in an uproar at Octavia’s very public and not-authorized announcement to the court of Tristan’s treason and her definitive dismissal of his faux betrothal agreement and his courtship as a whole.

“You should have told us first,” Anya argued as she followed the duchess out of the hall.

“I don’t need to run everything by you,” Octavia snapped, picking up her pace.

Anya continued arguing, and Clarke bit her tongue hard not to interject, though Bellamy wasn’t showing the same restraint. Part of her wished he would stay silent, let Octavia fight this battle on her own. She was so caught up in keeping an eye on the siblings, and Anya, that she nearly bumped into Kane, who was much too interested in the duchess’s spat with her Council. She dropped a quick curtsy and mumbled an apology, about to race on to catch up with the group, but Aurora’s stricken, strained expression and the way her eyes followed Octavia’s retreating back held her up for a second. When Clarke looked again, though, Aurora’s face was as placid as ever. Nodding in recognition, she left, chasing after the duchess’s entourage, unease niggling at her. There were too many players to consider, too many wild cards to account for. She just hoped that Kane and Aurora did not decide to play their hand now, not when there was so much other upheaval occurring.

The upheaval did not dissipate either. The tension between the Blake’s and the Council only increased, and whenever Clarke tried to intervene—now she couldn’t help herself from doing so, despite it not being her place—she felt the weight of Chancellor Wallace’s cold, disapproving gaze. It seemed to never leave her now, shadowing her, covering her like a suffocating cloak. She was careful to avoid being alone with him, not wanting to put herself in a position where she would outright have to defy his orders, or orders from the convent.

“I don’t know why you’re so concerned about him,” Bellamy murmured into her bare shoulder one night, his fingers lazily tracing over her stomach. “He has no authority over you, right?”

“Yes. And no. He technically doesn’t, but he is Indra’s contact at court, and she does have authority over me.”

He shifted up abruptly at that, concern on his face. “How much authority?”

“What?”

“Would she—would you be punished for doing what you’re doing?”

“What am I doing?”

He paused, starting at the top of her head. “Standing with my sister. With me.”

Clarke sighed, reaching up to brush away some messy curls from his eyes. Then she let her fingers fall, brushing his cheek gently as she said, “That choice is mine, and mine alone to make. Indra can do whatever she wants to me, ban me from the convent if she chooses. This is my choice, and I know my sisters, my real sisters, will support me. The only one who truly can judge me is Mortain, and my hands are clean and my soul is guiltless. If he thinks otherwise, then he is not the god I thought he was, and there is nothing I can do.”

Huffing, Bellamy laid back down, pulling her to him. “So I’m up against the god of death. That is reassuring.”

After shaking her head, Clarke sat up suddenly and swung her leg over his hips, straddling him. Just as she expected, the worry in his eyes lessened, replaced by want. She watched it grow, morph into need, as she ran her hands up his chest, his neck, cupping his cheeks.

“We’ll cross that bridge when he come to it,” she whispered, leaning down.

His hands settled at her waist, keeping her in place. “How about we destroy the bridge altogether?”

With a laugh at his half-serious, half-teasing tone, she brought her mouth down to his, more than ready to put it to another use, at least for the night.

* * *

When the crow landed on her windowsill, bearing Indra’s tag on his leg, Clarke knew the message he bore would contain nothing good. Still, she hadn’t expected the gruesome task it had, in code, tersely ordered her to carry out.

_The French whore is to be His guest by Michaelmas, as she does not seem to fitting in well at court. See that she gets there on time._

The convent was asking her to kill Aurora, no doubt suspecting nefarious motives behind her more recent efforts to mend bridges with her children—who refused her at every turn—and Clarke’s stomach turned at the thought. Panic rose, because despite her bold words to Bellamy the other night, there was a small part of her that still felt a pull towards the abbess and her strength, her protection and her promises. Could she defy the women that had kept her safe? Could she betray those that had raised her to not be crushed by the world outside their impenetrable stone walls?

Could she afford to let affection guide her hand instead of Mortain’s will? Could she trust her own judgment of the condemned woman’s character instead of His judgment? Could she trust the convent to know His judgment at all?

For days these questions haunted Clarke, and though Bellamy watched her with increasing concern, she just pasted on weak smile, telling him it was nothing. Then suddenly, the holiday was only a few hours away and with a heavy, torn heart, Clarke found herself lingering outside the door to Aurora’s bedroom in the dead of night. One hand clutched a candle—made from wax infused with nightwhisper, a poison that vaporized and stole your breath quickly and painlessly—and the other hand pushed open the heavy wooden door. As she stepped into the room, fumbling for flint in her pocket, she swallowed thickly at seeing Aurora’s sleeping figure.

She must have made a sound, because the woman shifted suddenly, sitting up, a flash of silver in her hand. When her gleaming eyes caught Clarke’s gaze, she grimaced but didn’t lower the blade.

“I wondered if it would be you, or the dark-haired girl,” Aurora whispered, too calmly.

Clarke startled, forgetting the flint and reaching for her dagger instead. “How do you know about Raven?”

“My children and I didn’t survive sixteen years in hiding without me learning a few tricks. I know what Mortain’s handmaiden’s look like, even figuring you out took me a while.”

“You can’t fight your way out,” Clarke warned, grip tightening on her hilt. “And I don’t want this to be messy.”

“Of course,” Aurora retorted, her voice careful and a little bit too knowing.

Slowly, Clarke let go of the dagger as the other woman lowered her knife. Somehow, though, as the minutes stretched, Clarke could not bring herself to reach of the flint again. Aurora watched her carefully, pale face pinched and dark eyes glittering sharply in the moonlight. Finally, the tension broke when Clarke huffed in defeat and strode forward, jerking the woman out of bed.

“Undress,” she ordered tersely, stepping out of Aurora’s reaching range, just in case she decided her life was worth fighting for after all.

Aurora raised her eyebrows defiantly for a beat before acquiescing, stripping down to her chemise. Quickly, Clarke inspected her, head to toe, and her heart sank when she found the condemning ashen smudge—Mortain’s mark—directly over Aurora’s heart.

“So the verdict is guilty then,” Aurora remarked. “I can see it in your face, you know.”

“Let me think,” Clarke snapped, feet itching to pace as her thoughts raced. “Just let me think.”

Surprisingly, Aurora obeyed, and tension mounted in the room as Clarke tried to reason her way out of killing Bellamy and Octavia’s mother. She hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not yet, and if Mortain was as fair as the stories said, he would not expect her to render a deadly judgment on intention, only on action.

“Do you want to live?” Clarke asked suddenly, jerking her gaze up to meet Aurora’s head on.

“I want to protect my children,” she responded fiercely. “That’s all I’ve every wanted. I promised them that I would, even if they don’t want my help.”

“Then you’ll do exactly as I say, without question, without resistance, and you may get to keep both your life and your promise.”

Aurora considered her carefully then nodded, and relief flooded through Clarke, though anticipation and nervousness quickly resumed their greedy place in her gut. In a few hours, Aurora would be pardoned or she would be dead, though either way, Clarke would be considered a traitor by the convent for refusing to carry out their orders. She couldn’t bring herself to care though, as certainty settled in her heart that she was doing the right thing, orders be damned.

Despite the war inside of her, she didn’t feel Mortain’s disapproving glare or righteous fury bear down on her as she escorted Aurora to her chambers or as she explained to a wary and reluctant Bellamy and Octavia of how exactly she was planning to save their mother. Neither did she feel it as Aurora stepped up to the dais at the start of the holiday dinner festivities that night, loudly and unequivocally declaring her loyalty to the Duchess, something she had been withholding in hopes that her daughter would be spared the weight of the crown.

Bellamy didn’t look particularly happy at the turn of events, and Octavia accepted her mother’s fealty with simply a grimace. Still, Clarke saw the relief in both their eyes when Clarke nodded to them, signaling that their mother’s mark had faded away. Her fate had been averted by her choice to support her children, finally.

As the mummers hired to provide entertainment for the night filed into the hall, Clarke felt herself relax just a bit, despite Raven’s questioning tilts of her head and Chancellor Wallace’s icy glares pricking at the edges of her awareness. It felt strange, that an assassin like her would feel so warm at saving a life. She had forgotten what it felt like, because she had buried those memories along with her mother, but now, as she stared at Bellamy and Octavia and the way they looked curiously, almost hopefully at Aurora—who could not bear to look back, at least not yet—Clarke realized she didn’t need to keep quite so tight a lock on those memories of her past.

So caught up in the warmth blooming in her belly, though, she didn’t realize how close the mummers had gotten to Octavia’s table. Too close, she registered, beginning to push through to the front of the watching crowd. A cry left her throat as one of the performers jumped up on the table, seemingly in jest. Clarke, however, saw the blade he pulled from his belt at the back, and she reached for her crossbow hidden in her skirts. Just as the attacker raised the knife above Octavia, she notched her arrow and let it fly, over the heads and the shouts of the now frightened crowd. It landed in his left shoulder, and he shuddered, then collapsed forward, barely missing Octavia as she shrieked and scrambled out of the way. Clarke didn’t stop to watch the duchess, knowing Bellamy would protect her, instead opting to tackle the next performer who was lunging in attack. She dispatched him with a quick slice of her knife to his neck, choking as blood sprayed across her face and into her mouth. Sputtering, she stepped over his body, yelling at the suddenly appearing Wick and Miller to take the bodies to Bellamy’s offices as she chased after the retreating siblings and council members.

Chaos ensued as everyone tried to make sure the duchess was unharmed and piece out exactly what had happened. More than one angry, frightened glance was sent Clarke’s way as they all rushed for the fortified Council room.

“Who the hell is she?” Anya snarled when the door slammed shut and Octavia collapsed into her seat, still shaking.

“Who the hell tried to murder my sister is the more important question!” Bellamy raged, slamming his fist on the table.

“Careful, Blake, or I will throw you out of this room!”

“Was it you?” He snarled back. “I know you’ve been communicating with Tristan. Did you finally decide to do his dirty work for him?”

Octavia made an angry noise, betrayal in her eyes as they locked on Anya.

“I was merely trying to hear his side of the story,” the stoic woman replied stiffly. “But I’ve made it clear where my loyalties lie, and they are with the duchess, which is more than can be said for you.”

“She is my _sister_! I would never betray her!”

“Admit it, Blake, you want the crown for yourself! Bastard that you are, you’ve always wanted what you could never rightfully have. You were in charge of the entertainment after all, claiming Octavia deserved something good after all that has happened. How do we know that you weren’t the one who tried to have her killed?”

Bellamy lunged forward, face red with fury, but Octavia jerked him back, yelling, “How dare you? My brother would never put my life in danger. _Ever._ ”

“Then why was his mistress able to dispatch both of those men in the blink of an eye tonight?” Anya shouted, whipping around to glare at Clarke, who just glared back. “You’ve kept too many secrets, Blake. I want to know them all, now, before any other bodies fall in this castle!”

“She’s from the convent of St. Mortain. Being Blake’s mistress was a cover,” Wallace proclaimed stonily. “She is here under my watch, for the convent has always been a friend to us. She knows what her duty is, and that is to protect the duchy, above anything else.”

Clarke fought the shiver that his cold, menacing words sent down her spine, just as she fought the urge to glance at Bellamy. She wouldn’t be able to look at him impartially and keep up the pretense, so she stared at the wall instead, counting her breaths until they were even enough for her to respond.

“I am here to protect the duchess,” she announced pointedly, choosing her words just as carefully as Dante had chosen his. “I would give my life for her, without question. That is my duty, and I have done nothing that would suggest otherwise.”

Dante shifted, as if contemplating protesting her last statement, but he thankfully stayed quiet. Instead, Sir Miller the Elder broke the silence, jumping in with suggestions and plans to catch the mastermind behind the assassination attempt and to tighten the duchess’s security. Before he got too far, however, Anya interrupted.

“Mademoiselle Griffin is not on the Council, and I don’t care what she says, I don’t trust her. She does not belong here. She needs to leave.”

Bellamy stepped forward in challenge, but Clarke raised her hand to hold him off. With just a quick reassuring squeeze to Octavia’s hand, she departed, refusing Wallace’s offer to escort her to her chambers.

“You’re needed here, Chancellor,” she hissed under her breath. “Besides, I know my duty, for Mortain makes it clear to me what that is. Nobody else.”

The Chancellor’s nails dug into her skin painfully in response before he let her go, and despite knowing he was locked away with the rest of the Council that afternoon, Clarke couldn’t shake the constant crawling sensation across her skin, telling her that he was lurking around every corner.

* * *

So, she nearly screamed when a portion of her wall suddenly opened later that evening. Immediately she reached for her wrist daggers. By the time she had unsheathed them, however, it was Bellamy’s tired face peering around the edge of the secret door.

“Where did you come from? I could’ve killed you!” She hissed, releasing her knives and slapping his chest as he approached.

When he didn’t even raise an eyebrow at her indignant accusation, however, she froze. His hands came to rest at her hips as her fingers dug into his shirt, holding him close. She didn’t know why she felt as if she was going to lose him, but she did.

“They’ve put out a warrant for my arrest,” he murmured finally, letting his forehead drop to hers.

“ _What happened?_ ” Clarke demanded. She shook him a bit when he didn’t respond, just sighing as she repeated her question.

“I was banned from the room not long after you left, but I stayed nearby, not wanting to give them a chance to whisk Octavia away without me knowing. I was able to talk with her briefly before I was ordered from her chambers and back to my own. David came to see me, to tell me that the Council had decided they agreed with Anya, that I have kept too many secrets from them to be trusted. Not only was I eliminated from the Council, but they called for my arrest, saying inquiries needed to be made in regards to my loyalty. He warned me, as an old friend of my father’s, so that I could chose what I wanted to do: stay and face unfair sentencing and probably execution, or run and have a chance at saving my sister. I chose to run.”

He seemed a bit wary, as if expecting her to disagree with his decision, but she knew what his choice would always be: Octavia came first. Instead, anger clawed at her, for the injustice of the situation and the helplessness that was becoming all too familiar to her.

“I’m going to kill Wallace,” Clarke seethed, and his grip on her waist tightened.

“We don’t know it was him,” Bellamy argued, sounding slightly annoyed.

“I know it was him, Bellamy! He’s had it out for you since the day I came here!”

“Clarke, we don’t have any proof! Besides, Anya was the one who—“

“It was Wallace, I know it,” Clarke hissed, her hands clenching into fists as she pushed away from a tense Bellamy. “I don’t have proof, and I can’t explain why he has a grudge, but this, all of this, is on him. You have to believe me. Tell me you believe me.”

“I can’t accuse him based on belief!”

Clarke let out a frustrated cry, and hot, angry tears welled up in her eyes. “And we can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

“You think I’m going to let my sister go without my protection?”

Clarke glanced up quickly at the sharpness in Bellamy’s tone, and at seeing the determination in his expression, her anger deflated. “So then what do we do?”

“I can use the old passages tunnels to hide out in and avoid capture for now. Only my family knows they exist, one of the few useful things Octavia’s father told her about here. If you can manage to have food brought to your rooms, I won’t have to risk sneaking into the kitchens. And also if you can get word to Wick, Murphy, and Miller, then they can help me with things beyond the castle walls. The envoy from the Holy Roman Emperor should be back next week, hopefully with an agreement to start bartering a betrothal. I know I promised my sister to save Lincoln, but with her enemies growing bolder, daring to attack her in her own home, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for a cure.”

He took a deep breath, and Clarke almost smiled at the fervor in his voice, the one that always took over when he was ensconced in planning and plotting, the one that stirred a fire in her own chest.

“If we can get a betrothal, then at least we can get that crown on her head, and get the French off our backs. Then we can worry about homegrown threats. We just need to take this one step at a time.”

She nodded, slipping her hand into Bellamy’s. “Whatever you need, I’m there.”

He squeezed her palm, not letting go until voices swelled and then fell outside the room, reminding them that he could be found at any minute. With a quick kiss, he slipped back into the wall, shutting it behind him, leaving Clarke behind with a mission and a worried heart. She knew he could take care of himself, but as their enemies seemed to multiply by the hour, she couldn’t help but think each goodbye would be the last.

* * *

When she woke the next morning, it took her a minute to realize two crows were cawing inside her room. Dread filled her as she glanced at the window, seeing her own crow in his cage below as well as the visiting messenger sitting on the sill. Indra’s blood-red tag dangled from his leg. Wallace had no doubt informed Indra of her defiance of the assassination order, and despite knowing it was the right decision, she still did not want to see the convent’s final condemning verdict of her behavior. When she didn’t move from the bed, however, the crow flapped its way over to her, landing imperiously on her knee. With trembling fingers, Clarke unwrapped the message from its leg, hissing when the bird nipped her thumb, drawing blood.

She pressed the slice wound to her lips as she read the message, and she had the iron taste of blood on her tongue when she realized the note was even worse than she had feared.

It wasn’t her own condemnation they were ordering. It was an execution order, and it was for Bellamy.

“No,” she whispered in horror as the curling parchment with the deadly order fell into her lap. She couldn’t do it. She would not, but if she didn’t, somebody else might, and she couldn’t breathe at the thought that one of her own sisters might take the life of the man she had come to love. “ _No._ ”

Her protest could barely be heard over the triumphant cawing of the crow, however, as it launched towards the window, soaring out into the open air, leaving the possible destruction of everything Clarke cared about in its wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments much appreciated - thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke may have decided to refuse her orders from the convent, but Bellamy's life is still in danger, and now, on top of that, they have enemies mounting attacks from both inside and outside the castle.

The creak of the passageway opening echoed in her dark room, and Clarke tensed under the bedcovers. Soon Bellamy’s familiar footsteps followed, and she heard him pause slightly, as if looking over at her. Holding her breath, she prayed he would do as he had the past two nights.

A few beats later, he sighed and then continued walking. A little bit of relief surged through her that they would keep to the same schedule. The sound of water being poured and wooden clinks told her he was eating the food—remainders from her own dinner—that she had left out for him. It didn’t take him long, wolfing down the meal with muffled appreciation. The scrape of pages turning followed, as he read his book and finished the food. Soon Clarke also heard the scribbling of quill on paper; no doubt he was leaving her another lengthy note with instructions for her, Octavia, Wick, and Miller to carry out in his absence. Corresponding with the Holy Roman Emperor was tricky, what with Emerson lingering closer to the Duchess and her Council than ever. They were all monitored but also adept at giving the French ambassador’s spies the slip, her especially. She had even managed to turn the tables a bit and follow one of the spies herself, but she grew disinterested when he just seemed to be poking around in Chancellor Wallace’s quarters for a while.

Suddenly the quill stopped, and Clarke froze as she heard the chair being pushed back as Bellamy stood. She listened as he folded the paper, like he always did, waiting for his footsteps to come over to her bedside. This was the hardest part of the last few nights. Pretending to be asleep was manageable when he was across the room, but when he crossed over to the edge of her bed to leave his note on the pillow next to her, Clarke barely dared to breathe. Her pulse thudded in her ears as he approached, and she squeezed her eyes shut. The damning words of Indra’s note scrolled across her vision, the spiked letters spelling out the kill order for Bellamy. She would not do it, but she could not face him either. He would see the guilt in her eyes, and she didn’t want to see the flash of doubt in his either.

She waited for the soft rustle of him laying the note next to her head on the pillow. It came, but this time he didn’t straighten up right away. His fingertips then brushed her hairline, the softest touch. Clarke nearly shivered from the sensation. Soon after, he traced down her cheek before cupping her chin and leaning in to give her a brief kiss. It was dry and sweet. Her lips tingled with sharp pricks and then she flew up to sit on her knees, almost knocking her forehead into his.

He grunted in surprise as she clutched at his face, confused eyes searching her own.

“You were awake—“

She cut him off with a firm kiss, and when she felt her lips prickle again, her heart clenched with dread.

“No,” she whispered sadly as she licked the poison from her mouth. Clarke could taste it on him, bitter and potent.

“What’s wrong?” Bellamy demanded, reading her dismay.

“You’ve been poisoned.”

Her breath caught, because the words had come forth without thought. She flinched back, expecting accusation and anger. Instead, his hands tightened around her waist to keep her in place and close to him.

“It wasn’t you,” he told her. She almost laughed at the absurdity of the comment, of him being the one to reassure her of her innocence in this moment.

“It was supposed to be,” she admitted after a long moment. “I got the orders a few days ago, but I couldn’t. I would _never_ do that.”

“I know.” His expression softened, and he brought his mouth right up to hers. “I know it wasn’t you. That it would never be you.”

Then he kissed her again, but the sharp taste of his impending demise had her pulling away, nauseous and concerned and determined to cure him.

“What is it? And how?” She asked as she pulled him to sit on the bed too. “We need to know how it is being done.”

“Can’t be the food,” he reasoned, lacing his fingers with hers. His hand twitched in hers, more evidence of the poison taking effect. She clutched it tighter. “You would have tasted it too.”

“You’re so calm about this.” It had her worried, almost angry, that he wasn’t more upset.

“I’m the bastard brother politician whom the Duchess trusts more than anyone in the kingdom. I came to terms with the possibility of this type of end long before I met you.”

He smiled grimly at her, looking too blanched even in the dark of her room. The poison was working fast. Clarke cursed inwardly, wishing she had found the courage to face him before this. She would’ve seen the signs, caught it sooner. Tears welled up in her eyes as the panicked thought of not finding the poison’s identity, of not getting the antidote, of not curing him overtook her.

“Hey, look at me,” he ordered, then gripped her chin so she was staring straight at his resolved face. “Whatever happens, you promise me that Octavia will be safe.”

“Don’t say that,” she hissed, her other hand fisting into his shirt.

“Promise me!”

“Of course I will,” she ground out. “But you’re not going anywhere. I won’t let you.”

Then Clarke pulled him forward and kissed him, even as the poison burned its way across her lips. She licked into his mouth, causing him to groan hoarsely as she swung herself over to straddle him. With fierceness and determination, she kissed him down onto the bed, wanting to forget about the poison even as its bitter taste reminded her that every moment they had together was fading.

He was undoing the ties to her nightgown when his fingers began to spasm more erratically. It was so bad that by the third tie, he couldn’t grip the strings. He exhaled in frustration, trying again, but Clarke just covered her his hands and moved them aside. Slowly, she untied the knots herself, rucking up the gown before pulling it over her head. Heat flushed across her cheeks and raced down her neck as she looked down at Bellamy, whose eyes were blown wide and dark with lust. Twisting her loose hair over her shoulder, she closed her eyes as his hands rested on her ribcage. He slid them up with deliberate care and teasing, though her pulse stuttered at the way they trembled uncontrollably. She let out a sigh when he cupped her breasts, his palms still warm against her own heated skin. He ran his thumbs of her nipples, pinching and twisting, and her hips bucked in response. Bellamy chuckled, and he did it again, this time with a slight smile. Tracing her own hands down his arms, she lowered herself down to him, rolling her hips in a more controlled way that had them both moaning.

When she kissed him again, she braced herself for the sour flavor of his poison-coated tongue. It didn’t pain her as much this time to taste it. She ran her fingers into his hair, wanting to feel every part of him while he was still around. His own fingers slid down her sides, then around to grip her thighs. It was a feeble grip though, and then he shuddered under her. Hands spasming, they slipped, and she felt him tense beneath her.

“This is too much for you,” she said hurriedly, pulling back.

He weakly caught her forearms in protest, drawing her hands back to his chest. His palms were colder now, and damp against her skin. He looked up at her with hazy eyes and a pained expression. “I want more with you, Clarke, so much more. Every minute we’ve should be enough, but—“

“I want everything with you.” She brushed a thumb against his lips in understanding; though her movements were soft, his words rubbed her raw.

He exhaled in equal frustration, his grip tightening. “It isn’t fucking fair.”

“You will get better, and then we’re not leaving my bed for a week,” she insisted sharply. “Maybe two weeks.”

His laugh was genuine but too soft, too labored. When it turned into a wheeze, Clarke’s chest constricted with worry. Gently she untwined herself from him, then maneuvered him under the covers. Immediately they wrapped around one another again, his hand twitching against her back as she listened to his heart work overtime in a muffled thudding through his chest.

“I’ll take on Mortain himself if you die on me,” she promised in the darkness.

“Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”

“I will,” she vowed before pressing a kiss to his side, feeling the sweaty chill falling over him even through the fabric of his shirt.

It was a while before she closed her eyes, terrified that he would slip away from her while she slept. When she first started coming to in the morning, panic seeped through her at how cold the bed was. Opening her eyes, however, she found that it was merely empty. Bellamy had made it through the night, apparently with enough strength to return to the tunnels. She was almost mad that he hadn’t woken her, that she hadn’t gotten to see him again before he left. The horrible thought that he could die before she saw him again crossed her mind, but she realized it was probably for the best that he hadn’t woken her up. She might not have been able to let them go, and that would only lead to his discovery. The poison in his system now was a slower killer, but if he was put on trial and found guilty of conspiring against his sister—which she was sure Wallace would no doubt arrange—he would be dead within a day of the verdict.

She could fight death better than anyone, but even she knew she would not win against an adversary such as the noose or the chopping block. Poison, though, was an opponent she had a good chance of defeating.

* * *

 

After delivering Bellamy’s instructions for the day to his sister and friends, she snuck into the streets of Arcadia for help. Clarke practically ran all the way from the castle to Monty and Jasper’s shop, barging in with next to no tact. It was careless of her; anyone would be able to see her urgency and use it as a weapon if they found out the cause. The image of Bellamy lying in a dank, dark castle walls alone and trembling with only his favorite book to keep his mind off of everything as the poison did its damage, though, made her not really give a damn about being circumspect. Indra by now most likely knew of her refusal to carry out the kill order; Clarke wasn’t risking much more now than she already had.

“Clarke!” Jasper cried out in celebration when she charged up to the counter. “What are you doing here?”

His smile fell as he took in her in, however. As he hollered for Monty in the back, he swept her behind the counter and away from the two other customers browsing the shelves.

“Is it Lincoln?” Monty demanded.

Clarke shook her head, and the boys sighed in relief.

“We’re getting closer. A contact of Jasper’s may know something. We’re just waiting for a letter from her before we whip something up,” he explained.

“It’s Bellamy,” she finally admitted. “He’s been poisoned. Not with Mountain’s bite, with something else.”

Jasper looked stricken, and Monty looked almost angry. “What can we do?” They chimed together.

She quickly explained his symptoms, rattling off a list of possible poisons she had thought of as the cause on her journey to the shop. They agreed with her on a few of them, discarded the rest, and suggested a few others.

“Any of these would be hard to get in Arcadia,” Jasper commented. “We’re one of the only stores—“

He cut off, looking slightly guilty.

Clarke frowned. “Have you sold any of these lately?”

It took Monty a minute, but he shook his head. “No. I’m positive. I would’ve remembered something like that, insisted on a following up with them. We haven’t checked on a customer for that in months.”

“Where else could they have purchased some?”

Monty was the one with the uneasy expression now. “Clarke,” he said gently. “Maybe they didn’t need to purchase it.”

“What are you saying?”

“Is there any reason the convent would have to want Bellamy dead?”

“Very wrong reasons,” she huffed. “And besides, they gave me that kill order. I refused it, and—“ The thought suddenly dawned on her. The convent had sent her to the castle with her own stock of poisons, just like they would any sister. Even Raven. “She wouldn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“She _wouldn’t_.”

“Why? If the convent told her too—“ Jasper asked.

Clarke snapped, “Because she hates the convent, and she’s more like a real sister to me than anyone, and she knows I lo--she knows what Bellamy means to me.”

Jasper and Monty exchanged a look. “If you’re sure,” Monty emphasized.

“I swear it on Mortain. Raven had nothing to do with it.”

This time they looked like they believed her, and with a quick grasp to each of their hands, she made them promise they would contact her if they recognized the poison killing Bellamy.

* * *

 

When she returned to her rooms in the castle, she found Harper and Monroe pacing outside of her door.

“What is it?” She asked, quickening her pace as she approached them.

“Her Grace needs you,” Monroe announced bluntly. “Quickly.”

They flew down the halls as rapidly as possible without attracting attention. Once they had to duck behind a tapestry to avoid running into Emerson. He shouldn’t have even been in this part of the castle where the Duchess’s court was hosted, and Clarke itched to follow him. Only Octavia’s need for her kept her from slinking after him.

“Tristan’s marching on Arcadia,” Octavia nearly shouted when Clarke walked into her chambers. “The traitor’s gathered his bannermen and is laying claim to the duchy as my _rightful_ betrothed.”

The amount of disgust and sarcasm in the last two words nearly made Clarke smile, but the situation was much too dire for her to really do so. The implication of it sank in, digging its claws into her worst fears, and for once, she was at a loss for a plan. Octavia was going on about sending for help from the Emperor and waiting out Tristan’s siege until reinforcements arrived. Mel and Fox looked terrified but ready to fight for their Duchess, and Harper and Monroe exchanged fierce looks, hands automatically going to their knife sheaths hidden in their skirts. Something like pride welled up in Clarke as she watched the girls, knowing she had helped them become a little bit stronger even in a world that may crumble around them at any moment.

“What do you think?” Octavia asked, and suddenly Clarke was pulled back to the problem at hand.

“Staying and waiting Tristan out?” Clarke responded. When the Duchess nodded, she sighed. It seemed her strategy and tactics lessons at the convent might actually be of use to her. “I think it’s risky. You may be well protected in the castle, but the people down below? They will be hit first by his soldiers, and if it is bad enough, he may force them to turn against you.”

“I won’t put my people in danger, but if I run, there will be no one to even try and protect them,” Octavia argued.

“If they surrender the city, Tristan will most likely leave them alone. They will be safe, and so will you be, far from his army.”

“The people won’t surrender,” Fox, one of the only ladies-in-waiting who had been born a commoner, piped in. “They love you, Your Grace. They will defend your city for you. They know what type of man and leader Count Forestier is, and it is not someone they want on your throne.”

Octavia smiled wanly, thankfully at the girl for her support. “So there is reason to leave, and reason to stay. I suppose Bellamy will have to break the tie.”

The duchess waited for a response from Clarke, brow furrowing when she didn’t respond. The words stuck in her throat, because Bellamy had asked her to keep his illness from Octavia. _She has enough to worry about_ , he had added to the note no doubt before leaving that morning. _I can’t have her distracted by me, not with her crown at stake._ In theory Clarke agreed, but as she stood looking at the duchess—a girl, a warrior in training, a sister—she found herself struggling to sustain the lie.

“Clarke?” Octavia questioned, concerned. “We’ll have to ask Bellamy what he believes is our best course of action, right?”

“Yes,” Clarke answered, fingers fisting in her skirt. The fabric soaked up the dampness of her palms, and she hoped her voice was steady enough. “I will ask him tonight.”

Octavia rushed at her with a hug, whispering in her ear, “Tell my brother that I love him and that I’m ready to fight, even if he wants me to flee. This is my kingdom and my crown, and I won’t be run off from it. Not again.”

Closing her eyes, Clarke swallowed down her guilt and nodded. As she fought back tears, she could only hope Bellamy was still alive to hear the message.

* * *

 

She waited for him to come to her room that night, but her candle just continued to burn down without any sign of him. She was staring so hard at the hidden panel in her wall that at first, she thought she was imagining the scratching noise. Finally, though, the sound registered as real and she flew off the bled to open the passageway.

“Thought you’d never hear me,” Bellamy panted with a weak but teasing smile from his position propped up against the wall.

“ _Mortain_ ,” Clarke breathed, kneeling down to cup his face and brush his sweaty curls off his forehead. “The poison is working faster than I thought.”

“I just spent the afternoon reading, so it wasn’t until I tried to come here that I figured out my legs aren’t exactly working anymore.”

Clarke had to use all of her strength to tamp down the fear at hearing the sheer amount of defeat in his voice. After a few more gentle touches, she wrapped her hands around his wrists, getting ready to drag him into her room. Bellamy pulled back though, resisting.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “I’m too heavy.”

She wanted to argue, but she knew he was right. So with a reassuring glance, she hurried back into her room. Quickly she gathered up some blankets and brought them back to him. He had taken his shirt off, flushed and clearly overheated. With a grimace, she tucked herself into him, making them a tangle of limbs and blankets and skin and fabric. Her fingers danced over his abdomen in a soothing pattern. They said all of the things she couldn’t, because her throat was too thick with emotion to let the words out.

Octavia was counting on her though, so finally she relayed the latest threat to the Duchess’s safety. Bellamy swore colorfully when she finished, and his chest heaved with angry breaths.

“So what do you want her to do?” Clarke prompted. He needed to focus on the next step, not the anger paralyzing him as much as the poison.

“I want her to run,” he answered immediately. Clarke moved closer, wishing she could fix all of his for him. Then he sighed and continued. “I want her to run, but I want her to have the crown more. It’s the only way to keep her safe in the long run. So we stay, and we fight.”

“We stay and we fight,” she echoed, closing her eyes as she rested her head against his chest. He twitched under her—the poison doing more of its destructive work—and she brought her hand up to his chest again, just letting it rest there while they fell asleep intertwined with one another.


	11. Chapter 11

The next day was a flurry of listening to Octavia bark out orders and scurrying to arrange her requests. Anya and Sir Miller had put up a fight at first, arguing that she should still run while she had the chance, while Dante remained stonily silent. The duchess had put up a formidable fight, however, with Clarke and Sir Wick, Sir Miller the Younger, and Sir Murphy backing her at Bellamy’s secret request.

Anya had glared at the four of them, muttering about how she knew _exactly_ who was orchestrating this little resistance movement. Octavia shushed her, reminder her it was her duchess asking her to fight, no one else.

“This is my home, my people, and I will not abandon either of those things simply because a greedy count sees fit to claim it as his,” she announced forcefully, sending chills down Clarke’s spine with the sheer amount of regal authority she packed into those few words.

Finally, once Anya and Sir Miller had relented, preparations to defend the city began in earnest. Octavia had already thought of many of the things Bellamy had asked Clarke to mention to her as necessary for proper protection. The duchess even scoffed at a few of the things on the list.

“It’s like he thinks I haven’t been paying attention to him at all since I took the throne,” she complained, almost smiling at Clarke.

She managed a small grin in response, relieved the duchess was finding some small moment to not look constantly stricken at the thought of the battle ahead. Scouts reported to them every few hours about Tristan’s progress across the countryside, his army growing as he recruited more of his bannermen to his side on the journey. Those loyal to Octavia were traveling too, but days behind Count Forestier, and those days, everyone knew, could make all the difference.

Octavia was doing well making decisions down to the most minor details, but little by little she wilted. Finally, she sighed and turned to Clarke.

“I need to see Bellamy. With who knows what is going to become of us in the next few days, I just—I need to see him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Clarke stalled.

“Please. I really need to see him.”

“Your Grace.”

“ _Clarke._ ”

She bit her lip, at war with herself. Octavia deserved to see her brother, but to see him, she would have to know about his illness, and who knows how she would react. She could crumble, or she could blame Clarke.

Or she could never see him again if she didn’t say anything.

As Octavia narrowed her gaze suspiciously, Clarke made her decision.

“Alright, I’ll bring you to him.” She paused, hesitating as Octavia moved closer, starting to look concerned. “But I have to tell you something first.”

* * *

 

Clarke held her breath as Octavia flung the chamber door open, a whirlwind of silent fury and worry. At first, the duchess had plenty to say and none of it kind towards Clarke or her brother for keeping something so serious a secret. After a heated argument, Octavia had finally calmed enough to demand to see him. Clarke obliged, and they rushed to her quarters in tense silence. That tension worsened as Clarke followed her inside the room and closed the door. Bellamy made strangled noises of protest at their presence.

“What is she doing here?” he rasped, weak but still indignant. He struggled to sit up, pushing aside the book that lay open on his lap.

Octavia hissed back, “What the hell are you doing not telling me you’re poisoned?”

“You have enough going on right—”

“You’re _dying._ ” The duchess’s voice cracked on the last word, and she sunk onto the mattress beside Bellamy. As she reached for his hand, Bellamy sighed and let his shoulders slump.

“I’m not—“

Clarke interrupted. “You’re dying.”

Bellamy took a deep breath as he stared at her. Swallowing tightly, Clarke nodded with tears in her eyes, reassuring him that it was okay for Octavia to know the truth. That it might be an ugly truth— _he was dying_ —but his sister deserved to know. Then he closed his eyes for a brief moment before looking back at Octavia.

“I’m dying,” he said with a sad smile.

“Bell,” Octavia murmured tearfully before collapsing on his chest, hands fisting in his shirt. His own arms twitched as he tried to embrace her back but couldn’t. Clarke choked back a sob as she watched them, not knowing if she should step out or not. As Bellamy bent his head to whisper into his sister’s ear, and as she whispered back, Clarke realized it didn’t matter. The siblings were in their own world now, as it should be in this moment.

A few minutes later, a sharp knock at the door startled them all. Clarke cast a worried glance at Bellamy, hesitant to let whoever it was chance seeing him. He just shrugged at her though indifferently, and with a pang she came to the conclusion that someone finding him now didn’t matter. He would be dead either way.

Still, when she opened the door, she was relieved to see it was Miller. Quickly that relief twisted into concern, however, at the grim expression on his face. She let him in, shooting him a reassuring glance when he frowned at Octavia’s presence.

“What is it?” Bellamy questioned.

Miller hesitated, still focused on Octavia. Bellamy let his head dip in encouragement, and the duchess shifted up wiping her eyes.

“Sir Miller?” she prompted, sniffing back the last of her tears.

Finally, he spoke. “Lincoln’s missing.”

“What?” Both siblings exclaimed at the same time.

“When Murphy went to move him to a more secure location before the siege starts as we discussed, he found him gone.”

“He couldn’t have escaped,” Octavia argued. “The door was bolted—“

“From the outside.” Bellamy groaned, in frustration not in pain. “So that means…”

“Someone let him out.”

“Someone took him?” the duchess asked, catching on.

She, Clarke, and Bellamy immediately started launching questions at Miller, who raised his hands to stop them. “We don’t know anything more know. We’re questioning people, discreetly of course, and will keep you updated. We just felt you should all know as soon as we found out.”

“I’d go with you now,” Octavia offered, clearly torn as she glanced at her brother.

“Go,” he encouraged. “I’m not going anywhere. Go look for Lincoln while you have the chance. Once the siege starts, you can’t be wandering around the castle.”

“I’ll watch her,” Miller assured as he escorted the duchess out the door, nodding to them both as he left.

The second the latch clicked shut, Clarke paced over to Bellamy. “You know who let him out.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy pleaded.

“It was Dante. He is trying to distract us. Only the Council knew where Lincoln was held, and Anya and Sir Miller have no reason to want him gone, or to want Octavia distracted.”

“I keep telling you, without proof we can’t do anything.”

“He is going to slip up sometime, and I’m going to be there to see it when it happens,” she argued hotly.

Bellamy sighed, jerking his head for her to come to him. Unable to resist, she climbed into bed next to him even as a part of her ached to follow Octavia down the hall, to look for Lincoln, to hunt Dante down and get him in her crossbow’s sights, to make him confess to all that she suspected. With Bellamy breathing shallowly next to her, however, she couldn’t bring herself to move away, not quite yet. Her skin sung in his proximity, and she suddenly felt cold, thinking of how he was getting closer and closer to never breathing again.

“I should go,” she whispered.

“In a minute,” he murmured back. His head slumped down to rest on hers, and she sighed. Closing her eyes, she let herself rest for just a minute, let the rest of the world that was falling down around them disappear for just a minute. And for just a minute, feeling Bellamy beside her, Clarke felt relief.

* * *

 

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. As she pushed off the bed, hoping not too much time had passed, she nearly called out to Bellamy to get up with her. Clarke caught the words just before they came out. Twisting around, her chest ached at how pallid he looked even in sleep. With a gentle kiss to his cheek, she sped out the door to find Octavia and tried to convince herself that he would still be breathing when she saw him next.

Despite looking in all the expected places, she couldn’t find Octavia or Miller. It didn’t help that grim-looking soldiers and frightened courtiers now filled the hallways as the siege grew closer to starting. Clarke’s breath quickened as the crowded spaces of the castle seemed to close in on her. She really needed to find Octavia.

“Clarke?”

She whipped around, and Sir Wick strode towards her.

She blurted, “Have you seen—“

“Her Grace is asking for you in the Council room.”

Clarke allowed one sigh of relief to escaping before nodding to Wick and following him down the hall.

When she strode into the room, Octavia had her hands braced on the large, round table in the center, staring at Anya on the opposite side.

“I won’t,” the duchess insisted, slamming her palm down for emphasis.

“You need to consider it!” Anya argued.

Clarke dared to interrupt. “Need to consider what?”

Anya shot her a glare as Octavia explained. “Tristan and his forces have arrived, and he has offered to meet with me to come to a compromise so as to avoid battle.”

Immediately Clarke bristled, but at Sir David’s cautioning look, she took a deep breath. Her gut told her they should give Tristan no chance at all—he was a traitor, that’s all there was to it—but they had a whole city full of trusting citizens to think of. So she nodded at Octavia to continue.

“I won’t treaty with him. After what he did?” Her voice cracked with indignation.

“You’ll lose the support of the masses if they find out you had a chance to avoid war and didn’t take it,” Anya growled. “And if you lose their support—“

“We’ll lose the siege,” Sir David finished wearily. “Please, Your Grace, please consider talking with him.”

Octavia scoffed and spun around, throwing her hands up. Clarke bit her lip, waiting. Soon enough, the duchess spun around with her arms crossed, looking to her for an answer.

“Your Grace, this is your decision—“

Octavia cut her off with a raised hand. Tipping her chin up, she walked towards Clarke. She stared at her expectantly but without losing an ounce of her authority.

Swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth, she nodded briefly. Octavia’s shoulders tensed, and a dark look crossed her face. Then her brow smoothed and her eyes hardened.

“Set up the meeting,” she commanded sharply. “Do it, before I change my mind.”

Wordlessly, Clarke approached Octavia, reaching out to squeeze her elbow in reassurance. The duchess leaned towards her for a brief second before pulling gently away.

“I’ll ride out with you to meet him,” Clarke offered.

“No,” Octavia refused sharply. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry, but no. I need you here, in case…in case…”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Clarke insisted, catching her eye. “ _Nothing._ ”

“I still need you here just in case.” Octavia’s chin trembled, and then she smiled grimly. “Just in case.”

Clarke’s chest tightened with emotion, overwhelmed that Octavia was trusting her as a second line of defense should the meeting with Tristan go south. Without thinking, she pulled the girl—a girl only a little younger than her but just as strong—in for a fierce hug.

“You make sure we don’t need an ‘in case’, alright?” She murmured into her hair.

She felt Octavia nod into her shoulder, and then pulled away. There was a lot prepare for and little time to do it. They could embrace again after the battle was won.

* * *

 

Clarke shifted uneasily in her saddle as she waited on her horse at the outer gate with Dante. The duchess and her entourage had just left to meet with Tristan in no man’s land between the castle walls and the front lines of his troops. Dante had been less than pleased at being left behind, but Clarke had quickly insisted that Anya, Sir David, and Octavia’s ladies (whom only she and Octavia knew could fight) would be plenty accompaniment. Though Dante had argued the whole Council should meet with Tristan, Octavia countered by saying at least one of them needed to stay behind—just in case. Clarke was relieved at the duchess’s cooperation, even if it was given unknowingly, because she wanted to keep an eye on the Chancellor from here on out.

“If this ends in tragedy,” Dante mused as the duchess’s party grew smaller in the distance, “you and I will need to work together to save the duchy.”

Clarke shot him a hard look. “I know.”

“I just want to make sure—“

A thunderous boom cut him off. Clarke’s horse whinnied in surprise, and Dante’s mount reared, nearly throwing the man. Regaining her bearings as she pulled on the reins, she looked to the smoking horizon on the left. Through the haze, she saw a cluster of trees had fallen to reveal a hidden group of soldiers decked out in Count Forestier’s colors.

“It’s a trap,” she murmured. “It’s a trap!”

The next time she said those words, she screamed them. Octavia and her entourage were too far away, though, and they continued to sit in the field, unmoving and confused. When a second explosion sounded, though, right in the middle of the enemy Forestier troupe which had suddenly lost a good portion of their members, they finally started to return to the castle.

Another Forestier troupe poured out from the forest on the right, though, and Clarke’s chest seized with fear. There were far too many soldiers for the duchess’s group to fight off, even if they had the surprise advantage of Octavia’s ladies being able to hold their own. For a moment, she considered riding out to meet them, but even her quick hand and vicious training wouldn’t save them.

So there wasn’t much else Clarke could do but watch in horror as the thundering group of Forestier soldiers headed right for Octavia and her party, an unstoppable deadly flood of metal and enmity that might just be the end of them all.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death comes to Arcadia, and it brings with it more than a few surprises for Clarke.

Clarke stood in the middle of the empty battlefield, choking back bile in her throat. Blood and bone and metal scented the air. As a handmaiden of Mortain, she should be used to this much death. The convent was steeped in it, responsible for taking so many souls from this earth all in service of protecting the realm.

Taking a look at the dead and dying around her, she wasn’t sure it was worth it anymore. Still, the battle was over, and she had a job to do. Stepping forward with her misericord in hand, Clarke tried to force the grim and gruesome sight of torn flesh, bashed heads, and broken limbs from her mind. She focused on replaying the battle for Arcadia instead.

It was a miracle that the duchess and her entourage weren’t part of the casualties lying on the blood-soaked field of trampled grass and damp dirt. The Nine had heard her desperate prayers for salvation apparently, because no sooner had Count Forestier’s forces begun their ambush than men dressed in Kane’s colors and in Lincoln’s colors (Clarke’s heart had damn near stopped at that sight) stormed in on their own mounts. They defended Octavia, even though she and her girls had their weapons out, ready to fight despite the unbeatable odds they would have been facing. It had been a close call watching the duchess ride like hell for the city walls. She had made it, though.

Suddenly, Clarke tripped on a something. When she looked down, she inhaled sharply. It wasn’t a stone or a branch; it was a bloodied outstretched hand. Its owner’s eyes were wide-open, glassy with death. Swallowing thickly, she moved on. There was nothing she could do for him now.

She took a deep breath in, continued walking, and let her thoughts wander back to earlier. At the gate, Clarke had cried from relief after pulling Octavia from her horse. The girl had been shaking as she embraced her, from remaining fear and mounting shock. No sooner had she let go than the duchess cried out, running straight for Lincoln who was riding in past the closing portcullis. Though he had groaned loudly in pain as he swept Octavia up into a hug, he didn’t let her go for quite some time. Clarke had found herself crying again from watching them reunite.

It seemed Monty and Jasper, upon finding a cure for Mountain’s bite, had snuck into the castle and administered it to Lincoln themselves without notifying her. They wanted to bring her good news for once, Lincoln had relayed. In trying to escort him—cured, but extremely weak—from the castle, they had encountered Kane and Aurora. From there, he and Kane had ridden like the hounds of Mortain were on their heels to gather more forces for the duchess, and just in time too.

A bit of blue caught her eye, and Clarke winced. They had come in time to save Octavia and the city, but many of their allies’ men had fallen. Some were still walking that line between life and death, which was why she had ventured back out into the field. At this moment, while Octavia reassured her people and solidified her control over her throne, Clarke was needed elsewhere: here—where the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. That’s where she could contribute.

It no longer left a bitter taste in her mouth that a mercy strike with her misericord was her gift. Resolutely, she bent down beside body after body, yelling for medics when the flame of life inside them was strong enough, smiling sadly and humming as she struck the final blow when that flame was flickering out. Clarke noted His marque on each of the fighters, smudged where her blade would cause the least pain, the quickest death. They were no longer signs of condemnation; they were signs of mercy.

Dusk had fallen by the time she made her way close to the castle again. Moans came from the medical tent, and her hands trembled at the thought of the lives left that Mortain would still come to take. She shivered, then froze. The prickling on the back of her neck had nothing to do with the night breeze rippling across the field. Turning slowly, her breath caught as she saw a tall, black-cloaked figure standing underneath the pine boughs. One look, and she knew.

_Mortain._

There he was, the god of death, standing a few yards away as if he were just another mortal. Slightly wary, Clarke didn’t move towards or back from him, just watched. Carefully, she bowed her head in respect.

She gasped when she raised her eyes and saw what looked like… _her father._

Her vision blurred with tears as she hurried toward him and launched herself into his outstretched arms. She choked out words like _how_ and _why_ but they got lost in her sobs. After a long while of basking in his embrace, she finally sniffed and straightened up to look him in the face.

In his eyes—so similar to her own—she saw the truth: her father was the god of death.

Relief swept through her that her status as a handmaiden, as Death’s daughter, didn’t negate her belief that Jake Griffin had been as true a father as she could have had. As he wiped away her tears, he spoke, though he had to pause when she fell apart again. It had been so long since she’d heard his voice.

Finally, he explained. “I met your mother when she lost her own, and I fell in love with her not long after. For thousands of years, I hadn’t wanted something as much as I wanted a life with her. So I gave up my godhood, to be with her and then with you too. When unrest began to stir in the realm, however, the rest of the Nine begged me to come back. Your mother understood—hated it, but understood. Or at least I thought she did.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Clarke murmured in a childlike voice.

Her father sighed heavily. “She was supposed to.”

Bitterness and sadness welled up inside of her. “But she didn’t.”

“She didn’t want to cause you any more pain. She didn’t want you to—to have the hope that I would come back. Because I couldn’t. Giving up my mantle twice would’ve been catastrophic.”

As much as Clarke hated it, she understood. Besides, there was nothing to be gained from holding a grudge against the dead. So instead, she breathed out, “I _miss_ you.”

He screwed his eyes shut, stroking her head. “And I miss you, more than I can say.”

“Why now?”

“Why did I reveal myself now?”

She nodded, looking up. Next to him she felt small again, felt so safe in his presence, just like she had when he used to chase away the monsters from under her bed. (She hadn’t known then that he himself was the very thing that men feared the most.)

“I was…I was afraid.”

Clarke almost laughed. The god of death, _afraid._ “Of what?”

“You were so lost, ever since your mother died. I was afraid that knowing who I was would spin you even more out of control. And I wanted you to find peace with your gift on your own. You deserved to want it because it was yours, not because of who I was.”

Her chin trembled with emotion as she embraced her father again. He knew her, even after all this time and distance separating them, he still knew her just as well as she knew herself.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his cloak.

His arms came around her one last time before his solidness slowly faded away. Clarke was left alone at the edge of the forest, twilight descending as fast as her tears.

Lifting her chin with the last bit of resolve she had left, she managed a smile into the blackness where he had been. “May we meet again.”

She heard his voice on the night breeze, echoing the words back to her. Then there was the soft pressure of a kiss to the crown of her head. A wash of love ran through her, and then understanding.

“Oh,” she exhaled. Clarke whipped around to look up at the castle windows winking with candlelight.

She finally knew what she had to do—how to save one last life--and how little time she had left to do it.

She ran.

* * *

 

She found Bellamy splayed out nearly unconscious in one of the secret passageways.

“I can cure you,” she choked out.

His hand merely twitched towards hers in acknowledgement. As she explained what she would have to do, he managed a nod of assent.

Immediately, Clarke stripped off his clothes and then her own. As she lay bare on top of him—providing human touch and nothing more, given his state—she felt her skin start to tingle. The fear in her chest lessened, and her racing pulse slowed. Slowly the poison leeched out of him and into her. It was the last knowledge her father had given her: not only was she immune to poison, but she could also neutralize it too.

As Bellamy’s body heat returned from feverish to his normal comforting warmth, Clarke felt her own cheeks flush. Absently she played with his curls, traced his name (and hers) on his sweat-damp chest with her fingertip. The sun could have risen and set and never rose again and she’d be content here, with him, for once saving a life instead of taking it.

As her candle burned lower, though, Bellamy got better. She let out a desperate noise of relief when his hands came up to gently stroke her sides.

“I love you,” she breathed. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He closed his eyes and smiled. “I love you too. I mean, I came back from the dead to be with you, so—“

Clarke cut him off with a soft chuckle and a gentle kiss. She pulled back too soon for his liking apparently, because his steady hand (her chest tightened at the realization that his hands were _steady_ again) cupped the back of her head to keep her in place. He stole a few more soft kisses, sweet and short. Then when her tongue flicked against the seam of his lips, Bellamy groaned and captured her mouth greedily.

Tears rolled down her cheeks when she realized he didn’t taste of poison anymore. When he kissed them away, she let her knees fall on either side of his hips. It brought his manhood to the apex of her thighs, and they both shuddered at the contact.

“I need you,” he murmured roughly. “I need you, Clarke.”

She knew that he meant he needed her now, like this, and he needed her by his side, to save the duchess and the realm, and he needed her like he needed air, to not just survive but to really _live_ in this harsh world. She needed him in all the same ways too.

“I need you. I want you. I love you,” she replied in a voice that trembled with emotion.

After long moments of stroking and enjoying the feel of one another again, Clarke sank down onto him, crying out in pleasure and something much headier. His hips jerked into her as she brought them both into a slow, desperate rhythm. When his hands splayed possessively on her back, she slid her own up his chest. Leaning forward, she twisted her fingers into his hair and brought herself nose-to-nose with him, staring unflinchingly into the eyes of the man she loved as he brought her over the edge. Bellamy followed not long after. She collapsed on top of him, and he stroked her sides lovingly as they came down from their high together.

_Together._

Lying in his arms, feeling him just breathe underneath her, Clarke couldn’t imagine being any other way, but with him, always.

* * *

 

It took them a while to come out of their pleasure haze, but eventually reality beckoned. The duchess—and many others—was no doubt looking for them. And Bellamy needed to clear his name too, she realized. Her stomach dropped with sickening dread as she realized with the shock of the battle, of seeing her father, of saving Bellamy, that she had completely forgotten that Dante had slipped away sometime in the chaos.

“We need to find him,” she insisted as she led Bellamy down the dusty passageway. “We need to—“

She pushed open the doorway into her room and stopped dead. Quickly she shoved Bellamy back to keep him out of sight of the very man they were looking for.

“Clarke,” Dante drawled. He twirled a dagger menacingly in his hand. “Finally.”

Swallowing, she prayed—to Mortain, to all the Nine—that Bellamy would stay hidden. Despite what they had just done, he was still recovering. He would be at a disadvantage if he tried to take on the Chancellor in his state. “What are you doing here?”

He smiled coldly at her. Then he pulled a letter—one she had written to Indra about him and the treason she suspected him of. “I’m shocked at what I read here, Clarke.”

Fear gripped her, but so did anticipation. Slowly she reached down to feel for which weapons she had on her. “Shocked, because you didn’t expect a mere girl to see you for what you really are? A traitor, to your duchess and your country.”

“Did you really think the Abbess would believe this?”

“What reason would I have to lie?”

“I can think of one,” Dante sneered, glancing at her mussed bed, then at Bellamy’s book on her table.

“You’re not going to blame him for your treachery any longer,” she hissed. “The world will see you for who you are.”

At the same time that Dante took a step closer, fury in his eyes, Bellamy exhaled sharply and stepped out to stand behind her.

The Chancellor laughed cruelly when he saw him, then narrowed his gaze as he took him in. “You’re certainly looking better.”

“It was you,” Clarke accused. Bellamy’s hand slid around her waist, the only thing keeping her from lunging at Dante. “You poisoned him.”

Dante threw another long look at the book on the table, a sardonic smile twisting his features into something ugly. “Everyone knows the bastard brother loves to read. All I had to do was put a little bit of the ointment on the binding. I am curious though--how did you manage to cure him?”

“You fucking—“

“Why?” Bellamy broke in, voice hard. There was a tinge of hurt, and looking at the tight rage in his expression, Clarke surmised that the betrayal of his sister, and not his own near demise, was the cause. “Why did you do it?”

“Why do any of us do terrible things?” Dante said in deadly soft voice. “To save the ones we love the most.”

Clarke’s mind raced. She knew Dante had had a family, but his wife had died of illness a decade past. His sons had died in the wars with France, the youngest less than a year ago. As far as she knew, he had no one left. Something niggled at her mind, however, and then the light caught on his ring.

His _ring,_ the very one she had seen in Shumway’s memories, along with the French emblem. Suddenly she recalled how Emerson had planted seeds of doubt about everyone at court except Dante, how just maybe the French spy she had followed into Dante’s quarters hadn’t been sent to spy but to communicate--

When her lips parted in suspicion, the Chancellor chuckled darkly. “Have you guessed, my dear?”

“All along you’ve been working with the French! What, for money—“

Dante exploded without warning. “They have my _son_! Cage, my youngest, they _have him_!”

“They told you they have him as a prisoner,” Bellamy said slowly, working it out. “So you betrayed your duchess to get your son back.”

“They have him,” he repeated in a pained whisper. “I just want my son back.”

Clarke felt a small twinge of sympathy because despair was suddenly written all over Dante’s face. She didn’t need to say aloud that his son was probably already dead, or hadn’t even been in French custody to begin with. Dante must know that, but grief had twisted him far away from logic long ago, she had no doubt. So with slow movements, she tightened her grip on her crossbow as the Chancellor began to work himself back up into a rage again. He had certainly come there to kill her, the one small but loud voice of doubt that would damn him.

She had been playing with life and death much longer than he had, though. As soon as she saw the intent to throw the dagger light up his eyes, Clarke moved like lightening. The crossbow was up and fired before the blade even left his hand. A grunt of surprise left him as the arrow found its mark right in his heart. Slowly he slid to the ground, hand clutching at the bloodstain spreading across his front.

“Good shot,” Bellamy choked out, pulling her back against him, as if to reassure himself that she was indeed the one still standing.

Clarke squeezed his hand in comfort before tugging him towards the door. She didn’t need to check Dante’s pulse; she already had felt the small flame of his soul flicker out of being when he hit the floor.

“Let’s go find your sister,” she said quietly, turning in the door.

Bellamy nodded, face creased with worry for Octavia. Still, he leaned down to press a soft kiss to her mouth and then her forehead. A thank you, she guessed, for still being alive. Yet again she squeezed his hand, this time in acknowledgement.

_I’m here_ , it said. _I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere, not even if Mortain wills it._

They had so much to figure out—including the protection of a whole country—but Clarke knew, without a doubt, that they would find a way, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an epilogue planned but I actually really like the ending I have here, so let me know if you think things feel unfinished and I'll post the epilogue?


	13. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "By then, the truth of their romance had been reduced to a simple fairy tale. And, while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point, gentlemen, is that they lived." - Ever After (1998)

In the ornately decorated hall filled with joyous music and happy murmuring, the shine of candlelit gold caught Clarke’s eye again. She watched contentedly as the officially crowded duchess swept her consort into another dance. Everything about tonight—the night of Octavia’s coronation—was like something out of a story. Candles were everywhere, on every surface and at every height, and as Clarke moved through the crowded room, it felt like she was walking among the stars. Octavia and Lincoln were two suns orbiting each other, the center of everyone’s attention.

She sighed when she saw Bellamy staring at them, smiling even as the worry lines remained creased into his forehead. She began to make her way over to him, nodding at Sir Miller and his father as well as at Anya, who was in a heated debate with Raven. A swell of happiness rose up in her at the sight of her friend. Like her, Raven had broken from the convent after Dante’s treachery was revealed. Indra had been furious that Dante had been using her novitiates to betray the duchess, but her decision to tighten ranks at the convent and close them off even further from outsiders didn’t sit well with either her or Raven.

Clarke didn’t know how long Raven was remaining in the capital, but she was working on convincing her to stay. Monty and Jasper had offered her a position with them, especially given how her skills with explosives (for it had been she who had revealed Count Forestier’s treachery on the day of the battle) were beyond extraordinary. Maybe it was selfish of Clarke to want her friend to be close, but she was building a home here. She hoped her friend, her sister might be able to as well.

When she reached Bellamy’s side, he quietly murmured, “Do you think we posted enough guards?”

“I think we posted plenty of guards. Emerson is safely on his one-way trip back to France. Nobody interrupted the coronation, there have been no whispers of an assassination attempt planned for later, and even if we got wind of one, we have plenty of escape routes planned. Lincoln and you and I and her ladies are all armed. Even Octavia herself is armed. She’s _safe_ Bellamy.”

“She’s the duchess of Brittany,” Bellamy grumbled even as he slid an arm around her waist to pull her in close. “She’s always going to be in danger.”

“And we’re always going to be here to protect her,” Clarke replied softly. She tipped her chin up to look at him, to ease his uncertainty with a small smile. “Enjoy tonight. This is what you’ve wanted for her for so long. And for yourself. Let yourself be happy.”

“But what if—“

Clarke caught his jaw gently with her hand and drew him into a soft kiss. “Be happy, Bellamy.”

“As long as you’re here, I am,” he replied, kissing her again, longer, with more heat. When his hand slid around to arch her hips into his, she had to fight against the tide of desire that made her want to drag him to a dark corner of the ballroom for more privacy.

Tonight wasn’t about them, though. Tonight was about Octavia and the start of her new reign as an independent leader of a small but proud country. It was about Bellamy, finally seeing his family beginning to mend itself from something broken to something strong and lasting and happy. It was about her too, realizing how many people in this room she would kill for, die for, but more importantly _live_ for. So Clarke broke off the kiss but still kept close to Bellamy, her hand in his, as she looked around the room and breathed it all in.

Tomorrow she would pray to the Nine, to Mortain, to keep them all happy and healthy and safe and sound. Tonight, though, she didn’t need prayers because in this moment of triumph, of family, of love, there wasn’t anything more Clarke could ever ask for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW. Almost a year later and I finally finished this baby. It's been my labor of love re: stylistic writing, and if you've stuck with me until the end, you're a champ <3

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr (kay-emm-gee)!


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